Jay-Z has a 1930s doppelganger

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library posted the above 1939 photo on their Facebook page that makes Jay-Z look like a time traveler.

It looks like Jay-Z (whose wife Beyonce may be expecting a second baby) was just going back in time for a little research for his killer Great Gatsby soundtrack. It’s really uncanny how much Jay-Z resembles this man, and the Schomburg Center is hoping someone has some real information beyond Jay-Z jokes. All they know is that the date was 1939, and the photographer was a man named Sid Grossman.

“I was immediately struck by the similarity to Jay-Z and actually laughed out loud,” said Sylviane A. Diouf, Schomburg’s Curator of Digital Collections. “I still hope somebody will tell us who that young man really was.”