Jay-Z Learned Biz, Skipped History

Jay-Z makes the cover of Fortune and Oliver Wang finds this "crazy" (but in a good way).  I know what he's saying but I'm not sure anything can top Kanye West on the cover of Time magazine.  Of course, I wasn't following Jay-Z as he worked his way up from the streets.

As Fortune's Nadira A. Hira points out, Jay-Z "is not a traditional CEO—many financial functions are handled by Def Jam’s corporate parent, while day-to-day details are delegated to seven division heads who work beneath him."  This arrangement frees Jay-Z up to work with artists, entice them to Def Jam and help make hits happen.  And, really, it's not like he'd take an A&R or VP position, now is it?

But as the piece reveals as it profiles Jay-Z's life as an executive, it's a real job and, though he may have more flexibility than most employees, Jay-Z says that "for the most part, if I'm in New York City, I'm at work every day. I have a real 9-to-5."

He also discusses taking on responsibilities that he could have avoided:
"I remember the first day, having a conversation with the in-house lawyer here, and he was like, well, how much do you want to take on. And I was like, I want to know it all. And then all these papers started coming in, and they never stopped. I was like, what did I do to myself? What the hell did I do to myself? [Laughs] Because I'm sure no one expected me to really work. I'm sure I could have dialed it in, you know what I'm saying? But me, I'm the type of person, when I take something on, I really want to do it. I'm crazy like that. Something's wrong with me. I don't want to dial it in."

My only disappointment is that I think he's missed out on some history, perhaps revealing the split sometimes identified between the Civil Rights generation and the hip hop generation:
"Rap music has done more for racial equality than any other personality or element has done. Racism, hatred, starts in the home, at a young age. But it's hard to really teach hatred when your kid has a picture of Snoop Dogg on the wall. It's really hard to say you should hate this guy, he's less than you. It's like, 'Dad, he's cooler than you!' And Jay-Z would never been a room with Burt Bacharach under any other circumstance. You could have done all the marching on Washington and anything you wanted. That would have never happened if it wasn't for black music. Or music in general."

Go back and check out what was happening in the 50s that helped open things up in the 60s and then look at the photos of the 60s and 70s where you see black and white celebrities together.  That wasn't just about marches or just about music but about cultural and political change at all levels of society.  You don't get that from just dropping some hit tunes with gun references.  You get that from the beaten and bloodied but unbowed who would never settle for the back of the bus.

Update: Oliver Wang reminds us that Jay-Z developed his early biz skills via drug dealing.  In addition to acknowledging that most folks who follow rap music already know that, Oliver describes a couple of interesting books on the topic that sound like they might have something more to offer than the glamorization of the mostly boring lives of street dealers.

Comments

[sherm]

I am a big fan of Jay-Z and I was very suprised to find him gracing the cover of Fortune. The music itself has evolved tremendously, and yet these types of strides are so much more significant. Jay-Z is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the culture itself for all that he's done and the doors that he opened for many other people as well. One thing that resonates with me is how even though there are positive stories to be told of what the music and culture has done to contribute, the life preserver of sorts that it has become to so many young people who find refuge in the messages, how none of this is focused on even when hip hop IS acknowledged occassionally. We all know that the only reason that hip hop is even acknowledged at all is because it is viewed as the biggest marketing machine out there right now and that's talking dollars and cents. And for the large majority of the world "if it don't make dollars, it don't make sense," therefore no one cared before or tried to understand it until it became profitable.

[Kandyd 1]

How's Jig different from other CEOs at FORTUNE 500 companies, who get paid a gazillion bucks to run the ship?

Clyde, your commentary is right on point. IMO, the Black Roc-A-Fellar has done himself and his immediate circle a lot of good by joining the "good ol' boy" network of capitalism. But don't tell me for a minute he's done a fuckin' thing for the masses.

Here's the Blueprint brah ...
in case this is read by Mr. Hov himself: RUN FOR OFFICE. That's what hip-hop generation needs ... that and a little bloodshed in the process that will surely come if a rapper decides to become a politician.

[Shuttabugg]

Wow... I didn't even see the cover of fortune. I need to check that out mos def.

The gaps between the hip hop generation and civil rights generation have become evident to me as well. Even scarier that that is the second generation of hip hop heads who truly belive that hip hop was created as a political force to combat racism and oppression.

I encounter the arguement on a regular basis.

I think articles like this serve as a medium to begin to clarify contemporary youth culture and it's relationship to the social and political issues preceeding it.

This is just my assumption, having not read the article. I'll have to go pick it up on the weekend.

Just my take.

Peace.

[TECHA RICHARD NJUATE]

his rap style makes me feel funky all the time.infact,ilove his rhymes.he sings a lot of sense.