Hip-hop mogul Jay-Z (born Shawn Corey Carter) has been in an empire state of mind for much of his music career.

By that, I mean he has worked tirelessly since his first album in 1996 (“Reasonable Doubt”) to create a music empire that spans a multitude of cultures and generations. In 2010, he continues to adapt to what is trendy in business aspects.

A new, glossy black and white website (jayzhitscollection.com) was launched to help promote his new “Hits Collection” album – volume one is to be released on November 22. The entire site is built with Flash and features photos chronicling his life in hip-hop.

From his beginnings in the Marcy Houses housing project to his empire in downtown New York, each section of the website is sleek and innovative.

One of the most innovative parts of the website is their “Tweets is Watching” feature – a play on a song title of his Reasonable Doubt album called “Streets is Watching”. With this feature, fans of Jay-Z’s work can choose an era of Jay-Z’s career and Tweet their own memories or opinions of a hip-hop pioneer.

The feature also has an “add your voice” feature to record sound. When these tweets are received by the social media brain trust working for Jay-Z, some of those Tweets are retroactively uploaded to the Flash website.

Jay-Z has brilliantly blended his knowledge of marketing and business strategies into the new age of social media campaigning and online recognition – not to mention online interaction with fans.

It should be interesting to see how other artists like the recently released Lil’ Wayne will use social media to their advantage to promote albums. In the meantime, Jay-Z may have 99 problems, but a bad Web site ain’t one.