HOV turned fifty this week, whereas hip hop won’t turn fifty until 2023, meaning that Jay is a TRUE hip hop baby. He was only four years old when the genre began to emerge and so, has spent his life within the culture. As we here at Hip Hop Scriptures are committed to telling the history, present and evolution of hip hop, we couldn’t help but appreciate the parallel path with Jay Z’s evolution as a rapper, artist, business(man), father, husband and man. Hip hop has come a long way, and so has Jay. It’s commonplace today for most successful rappers to have multiple business ventures, sponsorships and product lines. The boy from Marcy projects learned from pioneers like Master P and Ice Cube and proliferated the Black male image in hip hop from what was previously propped up on MTV Cribs to one of the most dominant personal brands in the world. Black people, but especially Black men look at what he has done as literally The Blueprint. The average life expectancy for a Black man in this country is now 72 years old, meaning we can safely call Shawn Carter middle aged, and celebrate the fact that he is now living what seems to be a healthy, successful life.
He has a wife (you may have heard of her), who is a certified BOSS but doesn’t attempt to boss him around or belittle him in the public eye. He’s also the father of three, a hip-hop BILLIONAIRE never shying away, but actually deliberately putting his Marcy Project origins front and center. He also is very honest about his focus and prioritization on building wealth and a Black legacy that this country has never witnessed.
The hip hop community, however, has a complicated, and at times strained relationship with Jigga. There was the Barney’s debacle of 2013, and more recently his deal with the NFL and seeming detachment from Colin Kaepernick; the (alleged) stabbing of Lance “Un” Rivera and an endless array of stories about being wronged in some way from hip hop insiders, including Dame Dash - but we still love him.
We still love AND admire him, and on a somewhat subconscious level, perhaps we understand that to achieve what Jay Z has achieved requires incredible focus and a no-holds barred approach. Ruthlessly curating his own reality, dropping the perceived weak among him, making mistakes along the way, doing what seems to be the most good (like providing water in Africa), but with not even half, not even an iota of the ruthlessness of our supposed forefathers of these United States. I mean, seriously, when you sit back and think of all the lynchings, murders, rapes, ENSLAVEMENT (that Hollywood seems to fetishize), use of Black bodies as medical guinea pigs, redlining, police brutality — and then look at the wealth gap in this country. It really defies logic to think that hip hop’s Black billionaire would be some messiah like figure or even want to be. Ultimately, we’ll never know everything or even close to everything that Jay Z has done to secure his wealth, and everything that his future descendants will reap but it’s worth pondering how far he’s come, where he’s headed and what we can learn and apply to our own lives.
DROP YOUR THOUGHTS BELOW!! We want to hear from you.
