3 Kings by Zack O'Malley Greenburg

Author:Zack O'Malley Greenburg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics / Industries / Entertainment, Business & Economics / Entrepreneurship, Music / Genres & Styles / Rap & Hip Hop, Biography & Autobiography / Entertainment & Performing Arts
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2018-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

Jay-Z had his own guerrilla inspiration at around the same time. In the waning days of 2001, he released his first live album, Jay-Z: Unplugged, recorded with the Roots as part of MTV’s series Unplugged. On the cover, he sits on a drum in front of Questlove, whose ’fro pokes out above Jay-Z’s left shoulder, just enough to be recognizable but not so much as to take away any of the spotlight. A more surprising face in the photo: Che Guevara, whose image appears on Jay-Z’s shirt. The late Marxist likely wouldn’t have been thrilled to be associated with the gaudy chain dangling from the neck of the arch capitalist, but no matter.

“The spirit of struggle and insurgency was woven into the lives of the people I grew up with in Bed-Stuy, even if in sometimes fucked up and corrupted ways,” Jay-Z later wrote. “Che’s failures were bloody and his contradictions frustrating. But to have contradictions—especially when you’re fighting for your life—is human, and to wear the Che shirt and the platinum and diamonds together is honest.”34 As Jay-Z would put it on his song “Public Service Announcement” two years later: “I’m like Che Guevara with bling on: I’m complex.”

Jay-Z increasingly embodied those contradictions, both in his personal life and his business life. In the former, his old friends were being replaced by glitterati; the likes of Foxy Brown and Jaz-O had given way to Gwyneth Paltrow and Bono. At around this time, Fab 5 Freddy ran into Jay-Z at a Robin Hood Foundation gala, where the rapper had just gotten a tour of a Basquiat retrospective; the guide had mentioned that Fab had been close with the painter.

“I saw Jay at this benefit, he came over and was like, ‘Man, oh my God… Basquiat, I didn’t know that was your man… You need to break this shit down for me!’” Fab remembers him saying. “That would lead to seeing him develop this passion and love for fine art.”35 Jay-Z has since been growing his collection, which includes works by Warhol and Basquiat; he dished out $4.5 million to buy a painting by the latter in 2013.36

When it came to business, there seemed to be a growing divide between Jay-Z and Damon Dash. The latter’s confrontational approach had been an asset in the early days but became an impediment as Jay-Z soared higher up the A-list. In 2002, while Jay-Z was vacationing in the Mediterranean, Dash fired several Roc-A-Fella employees and gave rapper Cameron “Cam’ron” Giles the title of vice president without consulting Jay-Z; upon his return, Jay-Z reversed the move, escalating tension with Dash.

In 2003, Jay-Z made another move sure to upset Dash: he decided to retire from his career as a performer. It seemed that he’d gotten tired of rap after putting out an album every year since his 1996 debut, and perhaps grown a bit jaded. “I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars,” he rapped on “Moment of Clarity,” from his supposed swan song, The Black Album.

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