Jay-Z, Obama and Magna Carta... Holy Grail



A non-secret is that Jay-Z has money and a lot of it.  It is rumored that his net worth is more than that of a certain Willard Mittens Romney.  Incredible, as Romney got his on the back of a wealthy daddy helping to provide the best education money could provide and Shawn Carter is doing so without even a high school diploma to speak of.  Another non-secret or meme within the rap world is that those with money – even a little bit of it – walk around with it under their arms to use a metaphor.  “If you have it, show it” they say.  In exacting this, a theme that frequently gets pulled is “I ain’t even GOT to rap,” as if we didn’t already know that it was rap that got them there in the first place.
Anyway, never mind that…  Today, we’re talking about Jay-Z and his new album.  After the past 18 years of his life in rap, it is established that he, in fact, DOESN’T have to rap – or probably even ever work again – and his great-grandchildren will die wealthy too.  In spite of that fact, he and Samsung carried out a genius-level marketing play wherein Samsung pretty much subsidized the production costs of the album at a deep profit to Jay-Z by agreeing to pay $5 each for a million copies, which they would then give to a million owners of certain devices of theirs.  Since digital sales do count as sales in and of themselves, this means that the album was RIAA certified platinum before anyone had heard anything more than a commercial for it.
Which brings me to one of the points of today’s scribe…  If the album has already been guaranteed to turn a profit for Jay-Z, as well as Samsung for their troubles, then where is the motivation to actually make an album that would be worthy of the lofty name that once was Jay-Z?  Exactly…  There is none, really.
So why even make an album?

I have a theory that has been largely unexplored.
President Obama.
No, stick with me, here…

After the debacle and fallout that came from Jay and the Carter family going on a HIGHLY illegal vacation in Cuba and bearing accusers clamoring for the president to DO something to someone who claimed to be a personal friend for that, he had to make it up.  It is no secret that Obama’s NSA has been spying on citizens’ digital lives through their wireless phones of late.  This album was the PERFECT out!  See, first ONE MILLION people VOLUNTEER to download an app that they agree to give out a ton of their personal information and access to even more of it in order to receive a free copy of an album.  Now being that among this million people, roughly 10-100 thousand of them would be willing to IMMEDIATELY leak the album to the masses 3-5 days before official release, a great many might not be savvy enough to make sure that some technical shit and encryptedness attached to the album might not be getting passed off to now TENS of millions on the internets, including myself.
I sat at my desk Wednesday night and thought "how much would Obama and the NSA pay for VOLUNTEERED access to the cell phone usage, records and internet activities monitoring of a few million Americans?"  Then I asked myself "how much, monetarily, does that compare to looking the other way while a dude who can afford it goes to Cuba in spite of laws that tell him not to do that?" and for a follow up to that question, "do ANY of us want to waste time in court bitching about it?"
That's right, Obama called Jay-Z one day on his personal NSA-monitored Galaxy S4 and made him an offer neither of them could refuse in order to avoid a VERY expensive felony. Jay-Z convinced Samsung to foot the bill and the NSA is now looking through all of the great porn I downloaded while I was on vacation this week.  And in exchange for that, Jay-Z didn't even have to TRY hard to make this album.  Sure, he used Samsung's money to pay some DAMN good producers and has a MASTERFULLY produced album, but lyrically he didn't even seem to be bothered with being bothered.

So there you have it.  Now we know WHY Jay-Z made the album and why he could get away with such an amazingly produced, but halfassedly rapped, album.
As with everything, we can go forth with blaming Barack Obama.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I didn't think Jay Z ever worried much about his lyrics.

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