Jay-Z 100% tried to sell “Black capitalism” & his own personal wealth accumulation as some sort of collective good for Black America.
And for that reason, it was wrong of any Black person to critique him, his wealth or his nonstop evangelism around how he made it from a Black ghetto to a white boardroom.
His brand narrative is the exact Nixonian, right wing propaganda he claims to be against.
The white owner class loves him because he preaches that same “pull yourself up by the bootstraps & you can make it too” garbage that is used to ignore & deny the existence of institutional racism.
His definition of “playing the game” & “winning” was always explicitly about imitating the white owner class— laundering sex & drug trafficking money into other businesses & assets.
This is why you can’t separate the idolization of Jay-Z (& Beyoncé, frankly) from the idolization of whiteness & wealth.
This is what the brand always was. It’s simply become more cringe with passing time & the GQ piece landing at this point in 2026 reads exactly like a cultural icon who lost touch with the culture.
I hope it ends like Remember Me, with Pattinson in front of the window and it zooms out to show he's at Columbine, and then you hear shots, cut to black, cinema.
Baseball is American history. Basketball is culture that borders on art at times. Football has no redeeming qualities. It is the dumbest, most-convoluted team sport ever invented. There is a part of my brain that thinks less of you if you are into it as more than a passing hobby.