Rap superstar JAY-Z credits “divine intervention” with saving his life when he was shot at by a man brandishing a machine gun during his youth as a drug dealer.

The Run This Town hitmaker, real name Shawn Carter, began selling illegal substances around his Brooklyn, New York neighbourhood at the age of 13.

But one confrontation left him thanking a higher power – and his attacker’s skinny frame – after he escaped uninjured after being shot at three times at close range.

He tells Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine, “That was divine intervention. Divine intervention, and nobody knew how to shoot. It was one situation, three shots.

“No one really practises shooting a TEC-9 machine gun, right? And when you’re a kid with little bony arms – no wonder nobody could aim.”

By rounak