Jay-Z drinking champagne with his billionaire business partner. Should he be supporting OWS?
If Jay-Z were a politician, pundits might have labeled him a flip-flopper. Since his 1996 debut, he's been tacking back and forth from the silver-tongued underworld poet we met in Reasonable Doubt and American Gangster to the glitzy pop-rap impresario who emerged in In My Lifetime and popped up again in Kingdom Come. He's shilled for Budweiser after pledging allegiance to Heineken. And he famously traded his New York Knicks hat for that of the Nets (and a small ownership stake).
The list goes on, but over the past few days the rapper has come under fire for comments he made to Zadie Smith for a recent New York Times Magazine story. Jay-Z told the writer that he wasn't really a supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement--despite the fact that Rocawear, the company he cofounded, started selling t-shirts last fall emblazoned with the words "Occupy All Streets" last fall and subsequently pulled them from the shelves. Instead, he recounted what he told fellow hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons: “I’m not going to a park and picnic, I have no idea what to do, I don’t know what the fight is about. What do we want, do you know?”
Today, news outlets across the country have felt compelled to report on Jay-Z's lack of support for the movement, and on Russell Simmons' disapproval of that stance, which the mogul outlined in an open letter to the rapper. But Jay-Z's Occupy Wall Street problem mirrors hip-hop's broader problem with the movement. Mainstream modern hip-hop is, in many ways, a celebration of wealth--for evidence, one need only look at the ubiquitous references by Jay-Z and others to FORBES and its Hip-Hop Cash Kings list over the past few years. Indeed, rap's top ten earners pulled in a staggering $338 million over the past year, which would have been more than combined total of the NFL's top ten if it hadn't been for Drew Brees' outsized signing bonus.
Though hip-hop's most prominent artists are now members of the 1%, most of them came from having nothing, from being part of the 99%. And much of their oeuvre focuses on tales of early years spent hustling in housing project hallways, doing anything possible to make it out, regardless of legality--particularly Jay-Z. For over a decade, he has managed tiptoe the ever-shifting line between the vaunted ideal of "keeping it real" and the stereotypical scourge of "selling out." Part of the reason is that, while he may have switched brand loyalties over time, he never really misled anyone about his intentions. If you were listening carefully, he told you years ago that he "dumbed down" for his audience to "double his dollars," that he hasn't been rhyming like Common since he "did 5 mil."
So should Jay-Z really have told the writer of a story for which he was photographed in a $1300 suit that he supported Occupy Wall Street? In the midst of this teapot tempest, should he change his stance and throw his weight behind the movement? Probably not, because doing so would be more than flip-flopping. For a guy worth nearly half a billion dollars--who now makes roughly as much money partnering with companies like Duracell and Budweiser as he does from selling records--it would be downright hypocrisy. After all, just a week ago Jay-Z's Made in America festival earned him a paycheck (from publicly-traded company) that's likely larger than gross domestic product of Zuccotti Park's entire population.
Russell Simmons, who's been an outspoken supporter of Occupy Wall Street, has some credibility issues of his own on this front. As I pointed out late last year, as others have, he owns a financial services company that’s drawn criticism for its fee structure (Simmons says it’s a path to financial freedom for the underbanked). Outlets including American Banker questioned whether or not the mogul had priced himself out of the movement. Kanye West didn't show up to the park in his "other other Benz," but the self-proclaimed Louis Vuitton Don brought plenty of confusion to the scene himself when he showed up in lower Manhattan.
To be sure, hip-hop is too diverse a genre to find itself in total opposition to Occupy Wall Street. Socially-conscious, anti-establishment rappers like Lupe Fiasco, who wrote a poem in an issue of the Occupied Wall Street Journal last year, are logical proponents. And other rappers, regardless of their feelings or earnings, should speak their mind--lest we start denying artists that right, as Russia recently did with punk collective Pussy Riot.
I certainly don't feel compelled to defend Jay-Z (after all, he recently told me that the book I wrote about him was "horrible.") He may be a flip-flopper when it comes to shilling brands and supporting basketball teams, but he shouldn't have to change his mind and support Occupy Wall Street just because Russell Simmons--or anyone else--says he should. And the minor scandal that has resulted from Jay-Z's comments should be a reminder that hip-hop's relationship with Occupy Wall Street is a very complicated one.
For more on the business of hip-hop, check out my Jay-Z biography Empire State of Mind. You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook.
