In my semi-regular foray into the Sunday New York Times-- which appears at my doorstep every week (the "perfect" collegiate gift from a grandmother)-- I always begin with the New York Times magazine. What I find to be one of the most interesting magazines still in-print today, though ironically folded away in the back of a newspaper, the New York Times magazine I believe works to push the journalistic boundaries as does its parent publication, but maintain the effervescence and risk of a less fundamental American new source. Last Sunday, as I flipped through "T", the New York Times magazine, I was graced with the face of somebody I didn't expect to be in that publication of all, American-born rapper Jay-Z. Though actors and artists are greatly featured in the life and style focused publication, something about seeing an extensive article that speaks multiple times of Jay's drug associations as well as controversial lyrics, not only does it feel as though T is paddling through un-chartered waters of mainstream hip-hop, but also that Jay is diving right into that same stream. It's hard not to feel as though he's becoming one of the stereotyped "one-percenters", that much of his earlier work seems to denounce. However, given that the New York Times Magazine is as highly revered as it is, it as vehicle of journalism is able to shed a different light on the rapper, one that must be intriguing to its wide, mostly educated, middle-class readership.
The article works to link Jay-Z's technical skill as a lyricist, musician and producer with the role he plays within American Culture. It is a role that he appears to have given a lot of thought, and the way he is able to speak about how Hip-Hop as a genre and the work produced by it have often been reflective of American sociopolitical issues, such as when he speaks of the controversial hip-hop collective Odd Future. Jay-Z, "sees their anger as a general "aversion to corporate america," particularly as far as it has despoiled the planet. "People have a real aversion to what people in power did to the country. So they're just lashing out, like: "This is the son that you made. Look at your son. Look at what you've done.'"
However, as a partial owner of the new Brooklyn Nets, and the subject of a New York Times Magazine article, is Jay-Z abandoning the cultural post he once, long ago, filled for hip-hop enthusiasts? He has always been self-aggrandizing in his music, boastful of his riches, but always looking behind his shoulder at where that wealth first began for him, Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, NY. But, commenting on his acquisition of wealth his description of how he sees his role as a wealthy musician, "when you just say that 'the 1 percent is that,' that's not true. Yeah, the 1 percent that's robbing people, and deceiving people, these fixed mortgages and all these things and then taking their home away from them, that's criminal, that's bad. Not being an entrepreneur. This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on."
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