This is only a fraction of the wealth Hov has built since JAY-Z continues to find ways to control areas of the music business normally dominated by old, rich, white men by changing them from the inside. Outside of music, JAY and Bey are also philanthropists. Moreover, they continue to dominate the music industry space as the most in-demand and respected entertainers of this generation. Their tours sell out, they plummet the competition on the Billboard charts, and even though they are seemingly anti-The Recording Academy, they collectively have a total of 46 Grammy awards.
Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Filed under: Interest. The hustler mentality he glorifies suggests that it is only financial common sense to abandon responsibility, to abandon anything and everything in pursuit of instant gratification.
Tomorrow it may be to kill and old man for money. Whatever the application, the hustler mentality fears intelligent pain, pain that observes life, the pains that help us grow into responsible men and women. Thanks to the hustler mentality, it is also only financial common sense to deal drugs in order to rise up in the ranks in a shallow rap music empire.
Today there is no regard for artistic merit, of musical originality. The economic repercussions of the hustler mentality are now national news; they are the sub-prime meltdown, the overcrowded prisons, the school shootings, the welfare mothers and the crack whores. In terms of the credit crisis, which boils down to the compromise of trust, the pain is now felt globally. Two generation ago, communities existed in place of concrete structures and the analog world we lived in allowed for the natural order to predominate and keep us in harmony, be it violent and peaceful at once, either way it was real.
The reality of the ghetto, where people without means are unable to escape and must either succeed or fail as a community is more fulfilling, somehow, than the gilded cage of the rap star, where all can appear or disappear at whim. Even the peace we have feels wrong, as it is maintained at the cost of lives that we cannot see.
In the digital world of beat thieves and endless sampling from original work, we live in complexity, distanced from the real, separated from nature. Smart bombs and robots do the work of soldiers. We kill people with machines, we feed people with machines, we entertain people with machines. The only natural justice, then, is for the wealth of the nation to become as worthless as the people who possess it.
The judgment day teases us, the prospect of the entire empire falling apart challenges our adherence to the status quo. The diamond worn on the ring finger of a cowardly rap musician or for that matter, and exquisite White woman, that cost a 14 year old African boy his hands, is of less value than wheat. In the Real World, Jay Z stripped down to his naked skin is just another man; a lesser species stood next to a lion or tiger that could quickly kill him and eat him without a word, no less a rap.
The age of lions is over for now. The age of hyenas like Jay Z will perpetuate as long as a man can claim bravery for shooting someone out of the range of their own fists. A ray of light does shine, however, as we enter harder economic times. In the coming years we may endure a much harder knock life than what a drooling-at-the-mouth, manufactured imbecile like Jay Z could ever imagine. Needless to say, Jay Z is running to the Euro, the currency of a more culturally sound region of this tiny planet in peril.
But there is no safe haven from his own mediocrity and the machine of corrupt industry that has been built around an arbitrarily selected ghetto hopeful fed with the illusion of being talented and shrewd. Those who do not possess the gift of true creativity will always run, will always be victims of those who do. Hence the true creative element of this machine that is Jay Z are the marketers, the ad agencies, the financiers and investors.
But even they are fools. They are destroying their own souls, the energy that continues beyond their bodily existence and into the greater universe.
Jay Z and his entourage are feeding the people poison, without realizing that there is no difference between themselves and those around them, that humanity is a single organic unit.
They cannot fathom a world beyond their senses, and the idea that eventually such repercussions will come around to haunt them on a scale beyond their mortal bodies. Jay Z and the rest of the scum pseudo-artists of today ride on a brief, uniquely American trend that produces and consumes cheaply manufactured, low quality music like so much animal feed. You are what you eat, and hence a simple electronic beat, looped, with violent, loosely rhymed, associative blather over them has given birth to a generation of insecure consuming zombies with no ear for genuine music, no discriminating palette for what is food for the soul and what constitutes psychological poison that will entrench a man in a state of identified rage and ignorance.
The relativist will argue such a comparison, but we all know the truth if only for a moment we stopped following the trends and contemplated the timeless nature of intelligent art. This, versus the forgettable, generic two-penny offerings of rap music, doomed to steal, recycle, and rehash beats, with the least minimum effort necessary to satiate a zombie audience, the living dead of society who have not the ears to hear nor the eyes to see.
Rap is the man. Jay Z is the man. Rap is the slave master. Jay Z is the slave master. He is the one who makes fools out of men who have the potential to grow into supermen, men from the jungles of society, from the ghetto proving grounds of America to the killing fields of Cambodia. And now Jay Z has to run. He has to run to the Euro, the denomination of other countries and other cultures because the culture that created him is falling apart.
The wealth of the farmer, the soldier, the food service worker, the teacher, the factory worker, the dockworker, the janitor, all honest workers, but forgotten in the shadow of a two-bit hustler.
I been listening to Jay Z since 96 and Reasonable doubt, driving thru Brooklyn in a brand new honda accord thinking i was the Sh tttt at 19! Jay-Z is an icon in hip hop game. I have to differ from the last person, Dash did NOT create Jay Z, matter fact Dash was one of the main reasons he had a few Bricks, and the reason dash was kicked off Roc, was because the man spent foolishly on everything BUT music, trips, liposuction, and ton of other stuff I hear people say Damon Dash was the reason, I find this hard to believe.
Dame Dash is the one who really build Rocafella. He was the CEO. In fact, for years Jay-Z was rejected by major labels. Dame was the one running and making major decisions in the businesses clothing, label, liquor, etc… Much of his success is due to Dame Dash. They marketed him correctly. Vol 2… sold like 5 milli or something. Rocafella was sold for 10 milli cash.. Live nation deal worth million, more than madonna got. Very inspiring and great article. Life and Def is mainly about how he made it and very inspiring if you have some entrepreurial spirit.
Do You! I like your inspiring and insightful creativity. I usually find good stuff when I come to this blog. However, I never knew he was so successful! This post is really inspiring. Great stuff. Guns were everywhere. You didn't have to go far to get one. Just everywhere. After the shooting, what did he think would happen to him? I thought I'd go to jail for ever. And what did happen? He has become monosyllabic. His discomfort is obvious.
Did Eric simply not press charges? It's an astonishing story, I say. It was terrible. I was a boy, a child. I was terrified. Eric is clean these days, and the brothers get on. Was that the only time he shot someone? But guns were around every day.
There were shoot-outs, but I never shot anyone else. Most people in shoot-outs don't get shot. He knows just how lucky he was when he was hustling. He was shot at three times and each time the bullet missed. Have things changed in Brooklyn since then? I was in Miami the other day and there was this sweep of year-olds. It showed the weaponry they had — AKs, military weapons in the hands of these kids. He says he'll have a salad, and looks at me.
So if you take away guns, then what about knives or rocks? You gotta correct the problem, not the tool. Our salads arrive — olives, chickpeas, crispy greens. As with all things Jay-Z, it's top quality — the crispiest lettuce money can buy. The chair I'm sitting on is the comfiest but not flashest I've ever sat on.
He tells me more than once how important quality is to him. On the table in front of us are a number of elite magazines, all featuring Jay-Z on the front. He's got an unusual face for an idol: big puffy cheeks, pixie ears, fatherly and kind. There are a few stray hairs above his lip. Somehow, you'd expect him to be a more meticulous shaver. Today, he's dressed in casuals. On the cover of Forbes he is in a sober blue suit, every inch the businessman. He points me to the feature on him and Buffett.
It's obviously tickled him that comparisons are being made. Who's wealthier? He's a multi-billionaire. In his memoir, he paints a vivid picture of life as a hustler. He makes it sound surprisingly appealing, I say. Then you have the camaraderie and the love. Those guys are with you. You're all in there together, fighting for the same thing. All the time he was dealing, he dreamed of a career as a rapper. But it was never going to be easy to make a clean break.
The problem was, he could never hope to make as much money from rapping. We'd be like, aren't you supposed to be rich, you're a famous performer, why you in a tight white van with 17 people? In , he released his first single, but he was still selling drugs. Sometimes he'd tell his mother he'd made the money from music, but she knew better. Today, she runs the Jay-Z scholarship for underprivileged students.
Wasn't she devastated that he spent all his time dealing drugs? There's only so much you can tell a son at that time. You can tell him, don't touch that, it's hot, but at some point you gotta let him see for himself. And she really gave me lessons, but she also let me go. And I would have done what I was going to do anyway. She was a little more strict with my two sisters. For four years after the first single, he held down the two jobs. It was only when he made his first album in that he became a full-time musician.
I had been trying to hold on to two branches and I said, I'm going to put my all into the music, to make a legitimate life for myself. I never turned back. Much of Jay-Z's subsequent music has been about his early experiences — the deals, the danger, the shattered lives. Many of his songs are cinematic — character-led with detailed and sometimes complex narratives.
They are boastful as is the convention of rap , with references to niggas, hos, bitches and upmarket motors, but the lyrics also often allude to great black American radicals, movies and rappers. In the past, he has said Jay-Z is a character, but today he says he sees little difference between Jay-Z and Shawn Carter. He certainly couldn't have had the career he's enjoyed without the life that fuelled it beforehand.
In many of his songs, he seems to be searching for understanding of the past, penance even. The most profitable form of therapy he could ever get into?
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