I must admit I was one of those who downloaded the Magna Carta... Holy Grail app for my Samsung Galaxy S III. But I was relatively late to getting around to listening to the most recent offering by Hova. I have long been by intrigued by the career of Sean "Jay-Z" Carter as much as his music. As expected what I heard was a forty-three year old rapper trying to come to terms with being an adult rapper in a world that regards his genre as permanently immature. Track after track boasts, laments, reflects on being a successful black male who is married and a father but still demands respects as a MC. As hip hop has aged obviously many of its artist have gone on and had families, but that usually signifies the end of ones career in a way that is uncommon in any other music genre. As Lewis R. Gordon, has noted in "The Problem of Maturity in Hip Hop" the general audience of hip hop expects a perpetual child-like state for its artists. Consider former label mate and later employee LL Cool J decision to leave Def Jam largely because of the relative fast rise of Sean Carter to the position of president of Def Jam Records. However, when one thinks of James Todd Smith as LL Cool J it is still as a twenty-something not quite mature rapper, a persona that he wears quite proudly. As the photo in this post suggest Jay-Z desire to become a owner of the means of production is quite a departure from the current drone of songs about poppin mollys, guns, cars, and women. It is the fact that Sean Carter maintains his Jay-Z persona and continues to rap that makes him different than other rappers and requires an interrogation of him as artist and business man.
I feel comfortable making this declaration. Jay-Z is the first successful rapper. Granted there have been plenty of rappers to make substantial earnings and parlay that into another career choice. Will Smith, Percy "Master P" Miller, Sean "Diddy" Combs are all relatively wealthy and are staples in the global consumerism of all things hip hop related. But there is a qualitative difference between how Carter and other rappers have treated fame and wealth. Perhaps the poster child for squandered wealth is MC Hammer who in the early 90s became a brand name but was not successful at translating that into ownership potential. And rappers have long been product endorsers ever since Run-DMC requested a packed Madison Square Garden crowd to hold their Adidas in the air. Rappers have endorsed everything imaginable from cereal to vitamin water. However, Jay-Z has held to true to his word in not simply being "a business man, I'm a business man." He has turned his name and persona into a brand which he has cultivated into many successful business ventures. But as his lyrics suggest ( Label owners hate me I'm raisin' the status quo up, I'm overchargin' niggas for what they did to the Cold Crush. Pay us like you owe us for all the years that you hold us. We can talk, but money talks so talk mo' bucks) he has always been cognizant of fate of hip hop artists as income earners with a limited shelf life. In essence, Jay Z desire to a successful black capitalist in manner is informed by the synthesis of black nationalism and black capitalism of the late 1970s. It is the same ethos that animated Earl Graves and his Black Enterprise magazine and what one finds in the current crop of African American CEOs in Fortune 500 companies.
Magna Carta... Holy Grail has been criticized by many such as the Washington Post for being an exercise in base consumersim. Imagine this accusation being leveled at Phil Knight, ceo of Nike for treating consumers as consumers. Perhaps it is society's desire to see rappers as underprivileged urban blacks with insatiable consumer desires and never as a producers and entrepreneurs hence the criticism of Jay-Z's deal with Samsung to bulk order one million download units of Magna Carta for its customers.
With that said, Jay-Z's success should not escape our critique as there are many areas that require engagement. His unabashed capitalist ethos is problematic to say the least considering Jay-Z considers his path the "blueprint" to success for any aspiring rapper. Also, his ambivalent relationship with President Obama as co-symbol of post-raciality in the minds of many younger Americans of all racial and ethnic backgrounds require holding Jay-Z accountable for the narrative that his music and business persona has carefully crafted to present a image of African American success. But before we engage Jay-Z, let's admit he is a different kind of rapper.
I feel comfortable making this declaration. Jay-Z is the first successful rapper. Granted there have been plenty of rappers to make substantial earnings and parlay that into another career choice. Will Smith, Percy "Master P" Miller, Sean "Diddy" Combs are all relatively wealthy and are staples in the global consumerism of all things hip hop related. But there is a qualitative difference between how Carter and other rappers have treated fame and wealth. Perhaps the poster child for squandered wealth is MC Hammer who in the early 90s became a brand name but was not successful at translating that into ownership potential. And rappers have long been product endorsers ever since Run-DMC requested a packed Madison Square Garden crowd to hold their Adidas in the air. Rappers have endorsed everything imaginable from cereal to vitamin water. However, Jay-Z has held to true to his word in not simply being "a business man, I'm a business man." He has turned his name and persona into a brand which he has cultivated into many successful business ventures. But as his lyrics suggest ( Label owners hate me I'm raisin' the status quo up, I'm overchargin' niggas for what they did to the Cold Crush. Pay us like you owe us for all the years that you hold us. We can talk, but money talks so talk mo' bucks) he has always been cognizant of fate of hip hop artists as income earners with a limited shelf life. In essence, Jay Z desire to a successful black capitalist in manner is informed by the synthesis of black nationalism and black capitalism of the late 1970s. It is the same ethos that animated Earl Graves and his Black Enterprise magazine and what one finds in the current crop of African American CEOs in Fortune 500 companies.
Magna Carta... Holy Grail has been criticized by many such as the Washington Post for being an exercise in base consumersim. Imagine this accusation being leveled at Phil Knight, ceo of Nike for treating consumers as consumers. Perhaps it is society's desire to see rappers as underprivileged urban blacks with insatiable consumer desires and never as a producers and entrepreneurs hence the criticism of Jay-Z's deal with Samsung to bulk order one million download units of Magna Carta for its customers.
With that said, Jay-Z's success should not escape our critique as there are many areas that require engagement. His unabashed capitalist ethos is problematic to say the least considering Jay-Z considers his path the "blueprint" to success for any aspiring rapper. Also, his ambivalent relationship with President Obama as co-symbol of post-raciality in the minds of many younger Americans of all racial and ethnic backgrounds require holding Jay-Z accountable for the narrative that his music and business persona has carefully crafted to present a image of African American success. But before we engage Jay-Z, let's admit he is a different kind of rapper.
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