Legendary rapper Jay-Z has announced a world tour with a difference this summer.

The star is planning to make a difference to the world with his new tour which will see him travelling the world discovering more about the world's global water shortage. It was announced earlier this week that Jay-Z is collaborating with MTV and the United Nations (UN) to bring the problem of the growing water crisis to the attention of the world.

The UN is clearly keen to use Jay-Z and the satellite television channel to explain the problems of the water crisis to a wider audience and as such the hip hop star and mogul is to take part in an MTV television series.

So this summer, instead of touring concert venues playing to crowds of fans, Jay-Z will be meeting some of the people who suffer to find clean water on a daily basis.

Speaking at the launch of the campaign, Jay-Z told reporters: "I'm not just going to go there and, you know, rap to them."

He continued: "I want to touch and help and maybe see what I can do in these areas."

The programme will be screened on MTV in November and is to be called The Diary of Jay-Z: Water for Life. The cameras will follow him through a variety of different countries, including Poland and Turkey.

But this will not simply be a case of Jay-Z arriving in these water-deprived places and giving sympathy to the locals. There will also be discussion on how environmentally-friendly solutions can be found to beat the problem. Jay-Z will also visit areas in which such eco-friendly solutions are already in place, with differing degrees of success.

The hip hop legend said: "We're going to address the problems of the crisis out there and we're going to go to places where the play pumps are actually being built and see the progress of what we're actually out there doing and we're gonna educate people at the same time.

"My thing is to bring awareness to the problem and to provide access," he explained.