Let's start with facts. Jay Z is a hypercapitalist. The foundation of his economic principles were built & solidified in the vicious drug game of the 80s. All he did was take that same model into the rap game at a time when the industry was being co-opted by institutions who had the resources to take advantage & exploit hip hop culture's limitless earning potential. He's the product of a Post-Civil Rights marketing of individualism, Reaganomics being the standard. Woven into his lyrics are vivid elaborations of obtaining & maintaining wealth for himself & his small circle of trusted associates. Now, I'm not against the accumulation of capital to better the life of self & loved ones. At the same time, in the cultural tradition of Blackness, social responsibility comes with that territory. A certain degree of integrity must be shown. Especially if you made your fortune off the strength & support of those same Black people. He can't blame us for expecting some type of accountability, since he DOES call himself a "real Nigga", and the socially conscious lyrics he manages to sprinkle on his tracks occasionally show us that he's not ignorant to what's going on. I read Decoded. Jigga displayed a cohesive thought process, which told me that this is a man who carefully thinks out each possibility before making a life-changing decision.
Now, Barneys been on that bullshit for years. For that matter, most retailers have been executing Shop-And-Frisk tactics for years. It may not be in the employee manual, but best believe it's company policy to profile people who look a certain way. He probably knows this from his drug-dealing days, when hustlers were shopping at these stores, buying out the spot with their profits from the illicit trade. Regular black folk as well! They were getting profiled back then, also. Until that currency comes out of our pocket, they look at us like vagrants. Even after the bread is on display, the reluctance of the clerk is obvious (at times, the sales clerk is Black, and profiles their own skinfolk, under the guise of "doing their job"). They can respect the money, but they don't feel obligated to respect the skin color of the customer who's spending it.
With that being said, Jay made the choice to pursue his venture at the expense of the practice of his business partners. He probably looks at his deal as another symbolic accomplishment in his ascension to mainstream respectability. He's doing it at the expense of the demographic he was one a part of & still gets support from unconditionally. It wouldn't hurt for him to show some integrity. Then again, the check speaks louder than his morals. He made that clear a long time ago. Each transaction brings more of a sense of disappointment, cause you'd like to see a man of his stature take a moral stand every once in a while. Took a stand against Cristal. We respected him for that. He parlayed that into Ace Of Spades. He has the clout to generate capital as an independent entity unto himself. However, from the deals he's brokered over the past couple of years, I'm taking the position that there's strings being pulled which we don't see (or care to see). Do you think those executives wanna lose the monopoly they have on the industry, which generates them such an obscene amount of wealth? Do y'all think they want to share the profits of cultural capital with the original creators (mostly Black & people of color) when they've been successfully exploiting them for decades? Do y'all think they want Jay Z to activate the consciousness of young entrepreneurs to demand their rightful share for their labor of love (I'm overcharging niggas for what they did to the Cold Crush/Pay us like you owe us for all the years that you ho'ed us/we could talk, but money talks, so talk mo' bucks)? As much as people don't want to believe this, he has to answer to a higher authority, that authority which finances and oversee the mainstream culture that generates billions & controls the mind & emotions of the buying public. No, I ain't talking about no damm Illuminati. That's a conversation most ain't ready to have. The elite rather have Mr. Carter as a token in the same style as the President than actually let him be a true catalyst for radical cultural change. And he's accepting his role (along with the paper he gets for playing that role), lock, stock and barrel.
He called Harry Belafonte "boy", yet he stands on his shoulders, same way OG Belafonte stood on the shoulders of Paul Robeson. He also has the gall to call himself a revolutionary because he's a multi-millionaire in a racist society. An anomaly, yes. Revolutionary? Why? Cause his birthday falls on the exact day Fred Hampton was drugged & assassinated in his sleep? Money don't make you a revolutionary. Working, sacrificing & living for the betterment of your people makes you a revolutionary. Using your capital to create, sustain & propel a movement makes you a revolutionary. Besides Cristal & the Grammys, I can't remember anything else Mr. Carter boycotted. He did come out & speak on the Rockefeller drugs laws back in 2003. That's all I can remember. Besides those examples, his track record speaks for itself. We were preoccupied with the ice on his neck to take notice. The materialism he was literally expressing had us mesmerized to the point we forgot to read between the lines. Superficial has never had that much swag until Jay Z came along. For us to expect some type of social responsibility from him when he's been making it clear that his motto is Dollars Over Everything, we've been lying to ourselves & getting lost in the fallacy that is the American Dream. He's done a masterful job marketing it. Two questions come to mind when that dream is brought up in discussions: At what price do you conceed your ethics & morals? Is it worth it?
This ain't pointing fingers. This is accountability. From one hip hop cultural citizen to another. For the sake of our movement, I gotta call it like I see it. I don't expect him to be Malcolm X tomorrow. But I do know that we have a responsibility to be honest with each other when we're occupying the same spaces in this culture. I could still enjoy his music AND critique his work/contributions without coming off as a hater. His work doesn't have the same effect it had on me 10 years ago. At the same time, I can't say that his content progressed past what I heard from him in that same amount of time. Very entertaining when the mood calls for it. That's cool. I'll get my substance elsewhere. I'm not gonna expect it from Mr. Carter. I'm woke now.
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