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I'm maybe the biggest Hov fan you'll ever meet. I've seen him 13 times in concert. I can't imagine my life without his music, my desert island album is The Blueprint for sure.
But this is Jay-Z's MO, and has been since about 05 when he transcended and became the face of the hip-hop genre. He is to rap what Johnny Cash is to country, or Bob Marley is to reggae. The face of an entire culture, a one-man industry. He's not a businessman...he's a business, man. (had to)
Jay's self-crafted myth making has long-been about being more than a musician, his entire brand is being the embodiment of culture and industry's intersection. There's two things he's ruthlessly focused on reminding you; he's gone from pauper to prince, and he doesn't write his lyrics down.
Thing is when others write things down about him though, specifically when they write about his business ventures, there's always the SAME ambiguously defined motive detailing his partnerships.
From 2006, when he partnered with Budweiser for the Kingdom Come album rollout:
Anheuser-Busch said Jay-Z would participate in planning sessions to provide “spin, thoughts and insights on various brand programs.”
Marlene Coulis, vice president of brand management at the brewer’s domestic brewing subsidiary, said the company sees Jay-Z as a great entrepreneur with expertise in pop culture, music and business.
“He’s got great appeal,” she said, adding that Jay-Z can help Anheuser-Busch “reach people in ground-breaking ways. He reaches our consumers on so many dimensions.”
all the way to 2017, when he partnered with Sprint for the 4:44 album rollout:
“Today is an exciting day to be a Sprint customer,” said Marcelo Claure, Sprint president and CEO. “JAY-Z is a global icon and we’re giving customers an incredible opportunity to be among the first to experience his new album 4:44. Our loyal, existing customers, and customers who switch to Sprint, can experience the album exclusively, plus access a complimentary six-month trial of TIDAL HiFi, giving them access to content they can’t get anywhere else.”
Seriously, whether it's Budweiser in 06 or Spring in 17...what the fuck does any of this language mean? Seriously, what are these people saying? None of it is tangible, it's rife with marketing industry jargon, and it -barely- hints at what's in store for the partnership OR for consumers even.
So when you read comments like this and realize how much these companies are just winging it, and then you look back years later and see that these partnerships amounted to NOTHING, then it becomes immediately clear that all they were trying to do is leverage Jay-Z's cool so as to desperately and shamelessly endear themselves to younger and hipper (read:blacker) consumers.
Rewind to last week, where Jay is now actually speaking the very language of the corporations that piggybacked on his cache for so long:
"With its global reach, the National Football League has the platform and opportunity to inspire change across the country," Carter said in a press release. "Roc Nation has shown that entertainment and enacting change are not mutually exclusive ideas -- instead, we unify them. This partnership is an opportunity to strengthen the fabric of communities across America."
Again, no real descriptions of anything. All fluff.
So to those saying that the fair thing to do is "wait and see"...well, there's a track record here folks. We have a history of Jay-Z partnering with giant companies and them never really amounting to anything. I would so love to be proven wrong, but history says that this is nothing, that it amounts to nothing, and that it mostly benefits only one business - not even the sponsor, but Jay-Z himself... who is likely on a yacht somewhere in Italy, crafting slick limericks in his head about how he used to spar with 50 Cent, now he owns the 50 yard line.
(As a reminder, he's not going to use a pen and paper to write these lyrics down)
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