JAY-Z Page 13
My peoples, Jay says, and again, my people. Simple phrases with profound meaning. He affirms a relationship of racial intimacy driven by empathy and trust, a trust he felt he had broken. Ne-Yo sings the brokenness in a searing retort on the hook: “Seems like we don’t even care.”
“Minority Report” also subtly alludes to the 2002 Tom Cruise film of the same name. In the movie, based on a Philip K. Dick short story, the prophetic abilities of a group of enslaved psychics are exploited to serve the surveillance state. Their predictive talent is harnessed for the “PreCrime” unit, which snags would-be offenders before they commit crimes. The film grapples with the perils of determinism in a fictional dystopic future. But for black folk this is hardly a matter of science fiction. Sadly, we exist in a world where “PreCrime” apprehensions are routine, even predictable. Our criminal justice system may as well be operated by psychics given the arbitrary nature of justice for black people and the troubling racial inequities that poison the system itself.
JAY-Z learned his lesson from the incidents described in “Minority Report” and grew more sophisticated in his response to the politics of race. In fact, if Jay can be said to have established a political hub, if there is a centripetal force that gathers his various efforts in a tightening gyre, it is in reforming the criminal justice system. JAY-Z has had personal dealings with the American justice system and can testify to how financial resources can deflect the “minority report” effects of a racist system. He says as much when he quips on “99 Problems” that it’s “Half a mil’ for bail ’cause I’m African.” In 2018, after penning a Time magazine op-ed the previous Father’s Day criticizing the bail industry and pretrial incarceration, JAY-Z and his business partners made a first-round capital investment of $3 million in Promise, a bail reformation and de-carceration start-up company. Bail reform hardly speaks to the horrid practice of locking folk up—who have yet to be convicted of crimes—for months, sometimes years. But JAY-Z could hardly say that to the family of Kalief Browder.
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JAY-Z, as Shawn Carter, executive produced Time: The Kalief Browder Story, a six-episode docuseries that appeared on Spike TV in 2017. The series painstakingly documents the crushing psychological and economic effects of the bail system on one family. Kalief Browder was sixteen years old when he was arrested in 2010 for a robbery he claimed he didn’t commit, and then spent more than a thousand days in jail on New York City’s Rikers Island awaiting a trial that never occurred. During his jail time he was assaulted by an officer and savagely beaten by a menacing throng of inmates. He spent two years in solitary confinement and attempted suicide several times, tragically achieving his goal in 2015, two years after he was released from jail, when he could no longer battle his demons. The series indicts the system itself. But neither the film, nor, for that matter, Ava Duvernay’s brilliant documentary 13th, nor the Promise bail reform effort, nor hip hop lyrics are sufficient to end the ruthless monied bail system or eradicate its racial inequities. But each, in connection with other grassroots and long-term efforts, forms a powerful witness on behalf of millions of black lives gobbled up by a punishing criminal justice system.
Perhaps Jay’s advanced understanding of the flaws in the criminal justice system began to take shape earlier in his career when he was not merely an artist but also at the helm of a record label, recruiting talent for his roster. Philadelphia proved to be especially fertile artistic territory. There Jay found a full slate of lyrically gifted hood soldiers shaped in the cauldrons of Philadelphia’s remarkable underground hip hop scene. Oschino Vasquez, Omillio Sparks, Freeway, the Young Gunz (a duo comprised of Young Chris and Neef Buck), and Beanie Sigel all hail from the city of brotherly love. Each of these artists had varying degrees of success on Dame Dash, Kareem “Biggs” Burke, and JAY-Z’s Roc-A-Fella Records between the late 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium. Beanie Sigel was the most talented of the bunch, although Freeway nearly matched him in lyrical skills and popularity. But “Beans” had great difficulty separating his rap career from his life in the underground economies of his native haunts. These challenges provoked Jay to admonish Beanie Sigel about his perilous choices on record. Still, as early as 2000, JAY-Z was becoming aware of how the criminal justice system aggressively operates in Philadelphia.
Beanie Sigel flashed entrepreneurial savvy and helped to form both a clothing line and a rap group (consisting of Sigel, Young Gunz, Oschino Vasquez, Omillio Sparks, Freeway, and Peedi Crakk) named State Property. The clothing line, a subsidiary of Rocawear, made headlines for its seamless sartorial synthesis of prison life and the streets. It is hard to miss the clothing’s symbolic gesture in its name: the justice system captures, contains, and controls black and brown bodies as state property. In retrospect, JAY-Z and hip hop, indeed the culture at large, had far different views than they do now about criminal justice reform. There were certainly artists who scorned police brutality and tried to lyrically check the system for its anti-black biases. HBO’s The Wire, a hip hop fan favorite, debuted in 2002 and grappled with many of these issues. But the impetus to criminal justice reform had not taken hold in social and political circles the way it has today, especially since the publication of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow in 2010.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, things didn’t turn out well for State Property. Their stage name proved prophetic. Beanie Sigel was arrested in 2004, and the group, clothing line, and JAY-Z’s deep investment in Philadelphia hip hop all began to fall apart. But the specter of an aggressive criminal justice system that relies on the fear and ignorance of the citizens it is supposed to protect and serve continued to haunt Jay. Like any great artist he worked out his issues through his work. One of the most powerful products of his artistic encounter with the criminal justice system is the song and video for 2004’s “99 Problems.”
The first verse of the song puts the media in its crosshairs. Radio, magazines, and advertisers profited greatly from JAY-Z’s brilliantly successful career, but he assails critics who reduce his music to “Money, Cash, Hoes.” In the second verse, Jay amps up the tension in a lyrical anecdote from 1994 about being followed and pulled over for “doing 55 in a 54.” Verse two is a mini-clinic on the legal limits of traffic stops and searches. When asked by the police officer if he knows why he was stopped, Jay’s narrator replies: “’Cause I’m young and I’m black and my hat’s real low.” The third verse narrates yet another run-in with the criminal justice system. This time, Jay’s narrator is “Back through the system … again,” and saddled with a huge bail because he is black.
While Jay’s indictment of the criminal justice system’s bias against blacks is skillfully interwoven in his lyrics, it may not be as apparent—even though JAY-Z’s hustling persona is always front and center—that the narrator in verse two is driving with a stash of drugs. “[M]y trunk is raw,” he claims in that verse’s first line. And the narrator of verse three is clearly engaged in retributive violence. In each tale, Jay’s narrators are guilty of some of the very crimes that the criminal justice system often unfairly accuses black folk of committing. But for black folk, the bias against guilty and innocent alike remains the same.
Too often people of color are victims of a vicious one-two punch: On the one hand, if they are innocent of a crime, they are told that the reason they are suspected is because black people commit more crimes than white folk. This, of course, fails to account for how such bias is a self-fulfilling justice system prophecy. Because of broader suspicions about black humanity and character, black folk are taken into the criminal justice system more often than white folk, not because the white folk are innocent of offenses but because they’re not suspected of them in the first place.
On the other hand, if black folk are guilty, those of us interested in true justice are made to feel immoral and unjust for pointing out that they receive far harsher penalties than similar white offenders.
That is why criminal justice reform must include sentencing reform. Si
nce most of the crimes black people commit, or are accused of committing, are nonviolent, it makes sense to release from incarceration nonviolent substance abusers, low-level drug dealers, and those charged with nonviolent possession of marijuana in every state that has legalized the controlled substance for medicinal and recreational purposes.
Yet we cannot simply reform the criminal justice system; we must fundamentally transform it. We must reimagine how we treat those who are guilty—even those who are guilty of violent crimes. We could experience true redemption if we were to rethink the morality of incarceration. In a very subtle way, the guilt of JAY-Z’s narrators in “99 Problems” permits a more nuanced critique than if his characters were innocent. But his approach is also an invitation to reflect on the injustice of a system that incarcerates more folk than any other in the world.
Jay is doing his part, which involves more than rapping: he penned poignant New York Times opinion pieces on the failed war on drugs and on the cruel fate of younger rapper Meek Mill, who, for the last several years, has been in and out of jail because of what appear to be arbitrary and draconian actions of the state due to parole violations. Jay argued in November 2017 as an elder statesman of rap and exposed the dysfunction of a system of justice he knows all too well.
What’s happening to Meek Mill is just one example of how our criminal justice system entraps and harasses hundreds of thousands of black people every day. I saw this up close when I was growing up in Brooklyn during the 1970s and 1980s. Instead of a second chance, probation ends up being a land mine, with a random misstep bringing consequences greater than the crime.
For each way that Meek Mill is singled out for reproach by the state—he and JAY-Z are friends after all—Jay takes the issue and connects it to the broader injustices of the system. Jay uses Meek’s situation to illumine policies and inequities that “hundreds of thousands of black people every day” face. And most do it without the aid, as Meek received, of noisy, visible protests, without the interventions of a cultural icon, and without a successful rap career to fall back on. James Baldwin popularized telling the truth as widely and eloquently as possible, and Jay bears witness in this way.
To that end, JAY-Z, seeing the need to reform and enact policy, joined with Meek Mill, Philadelphia 76ers partner Michael Rubin, New England Patriots partner Robert Kraft, philanthropist (and wife of Brooklyn Nets partner Joseph Tsai) Clara Wu Tsai, and Vista Equity Partners founder and CEO Robert F. Smith, among others, to create the REFORM Alliance, with CNN host Van Jones as CEO. The alliance’s stated mission, according to a press release, is to advance “criminal justice reform and [eliminate] outdated laws that perpetuate injustice, starting with probation and parole.” As he has done throughout his career, Jay continues to move from the artistic to the political.
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Jay’s political awareness also bubbles up in his references to black leaders such as Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Coretta Scott King, Jesse Jackson, Betty Shabazz, and especially Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King, Jr. To be sure, the mentions are more honorable than primary, more instrumental than substantive. For Jay, King is an emblem of the future through the fulfillment of his dream: “Let’s talk about the future / We have just seen the dream as predicted by Martin Luther,” he says on “What We Talkin’ About,” from 2009, referring to the link between King and Obama. On 2001’s “The Ruler’s Back,” Jay proclaims that “I’m representin’ for the seat where Rosa Parks sat / Where Malcolm X was shot, where Martin Luther was popped.”
Note that Jay doesn’t represent these figures per se; he would never presume such a stirring feat of racial ambassadorship. But he does represent the places of their struggle and death in a kind of architecture of prophetic personification. He sees their greatness despite their humiliations and (some of their) tragic deaths. He sees them as symbols of overcoming and victory, but not before they meet the bus seat, ballroom floor, or motel balcony of their destinies. Jay represents the spots and occasions of their transformations not as tokens of the hate that arrested them or the evil that snuffed them, but as the sites of their transition from earthly icons to heavenly saints. He is, by means of his words, a symbolic facilitator, interpreting these figures’ meanings and readjusting our understanding of their relevance to our moment. Although he was a service laborer in the underground economy, Jay, like them, faced the site of his potential ruin and reached a spot of transfiguration as a cultural icon. The crack corner joins the seat, the floor, and the balcony as the place where rebirth through symbolic or literal death occurs. Perhaps Jay’s words, and hip hop’s words more broadly, can give new meaning to King at the site of the fallen leader’s humiliation and symbolic death as recent news claims to reveal more of his flaws.
Before that, however, Jay’s jibing and jousting with Sharpton is revealing. It may seem to be a throwaway line, but JAY-Z’s words on the second verse of 2017’s “Family Feud” have deeper meaning and more history than one might hear upon first listening.
Al Sharpton in the mirror takin’ selfies.
Jay is referring to Reverend Al Sharpton’s Instagram post on June 18, 2017, wishing his followers a Happy Father’s Day as he snapped a selfie while heading to a workout at dawn. The post went viral. Sharpton, usually nattily clad in expensive designer suits, was sheathed in navy blue workout gear that included oversized trunks and white Nike sports socks pasted between his calves and sneakers.
Sharpton took the light jab in good humor. In several media appearances, he professed his love for Jay and ribbed him for being jealous of his routine. He admonished the almost fifty-year-old rapper to step it up, saying that he’d repay him by slipping his name in a couple of his sermons, and suggested that he was flattered to be name-checked yet again. Jay had cited Sharpton fifteen years earlier on his 2002 song “Diamond Is Forever,” which addressed a real-life fracas that Jay had in 2002 with tenants of a luxury apartment building who feared that his notoriety would distress their quiet halls. According to Billboard magazine in February 2002, some of the tenants posted messages in the lobby cautioning residents against Jay’s “criminal record and lifestyle of knives, guns and violence,” concluding that if the rapper were allowed to move into the building he would “place us in danger.” Jay vented on record, countering with a threat of his own to bring in Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to protest the injustice.
Old lady, don’t blow my high
’Specially if you don’t know my life, don’t make me bring
Sharpton in it ’cause I’m dark-skinn-ed or
Dude with the ’fro and the Rainbow Coalition.
A mere five years later, Jay got in a spat with Sharpton about his response to radio host Don Imus’s attack on black players of the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hoes.” In light of Imus’s crude remarks, critics claimed that hip hop was even more at fault for demonizing black women in misogynistic lyrics. Sharpton, who led the charge against Imus, said that he “would not stop until we make it clear that no one should denigrate women,” and that “ho and the b-word are words that are wrong from anybody’s lips.” The minister took to the streets in protest against three major record labels and their support of rap that disparaged black women. Critics contended that by drawing an equivalence between hip hop entertainers and Imus, Sharpton was conflating artistic expression and radio commentary, and that he failed to see the difference between white racist assault and undeniably sexist black art.
I missed the part when it stopped bein’ ’bout Imus
What do my lyrics got to do with this shit?
Jay made this tart retort to Sharpton and other critics in 2007 on “Ignorant Shit,” cleverly using a homophone to link Imus and “I miss.”
Some claimed that if Imus were a rapper, instead of being forced off the air he’d have a hit record. It was a sly way to escape responsibility for his racist and sexist rant. Of course, both sexism in rap and white racism should be addressed. But some thought it was wrong to let Imus enjoy a form of w
hite privilege and set the agenda: his self-pitying complaints about unfair treatment in comparison to that of rappers sparked social protest against misogyny in hip hop. Jay framed the conflict on 2007’s “Say Hello” as a tug of war between artistic self-expression and systemic social injustice. Jay drew a line between an empowering leadership that fights structural inequality and a moralizing one that tries to curtail black male speech.
And if Al Sharpton is speaking for me
Somebody give him the word and tell him I don’t approve
Tell him I remove the curses
If you tell me our schools gon’ be perfect
When the Jena Six don’t exist
Tell him that’s when I’ll stop saying bitch, BEEEITCH!
Of course, JAY-Z and Sharpton both had a point: it is perfectly legitimate to combat racial injustice while resisting the sexism and misogyny that corrupt hip hop culture.
Civil rights leaders and other prominent figures have been easy prey in hip hop as rappers unfavorably compare present activists to past luminaries. Too often they are unaware that many of the same charges they bring against Sharpton or Jackson were made against Martin Luther King, Jr., in his day—that he was an ambulance chaser, that he sought the spotlight, that he was hopelessly vain, that he was a reckless interloper. West Coast rapper The Game and Nas capture this stance on their moving 2008 homage to Martin Luther King, “Letter to the King.” Nas’s verse laments the betrayal of King by some of his contemporaries who are still alive. “Some of your homies phonies, I should’ve said it when I see them / Them sleazy bastards, some greedy pastors, jerks / Should never be allowed at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.”
The Game conjectures that if King were alive and marching today, the rapper could readily predict which leaders would support him and which would fall away. “I know Obama would, but would Hillary take part?” (In fact, when he ran for president the first time, Obama famously skipped the gathering that marked the fortieth anniversary of King’s death at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, built on the spot where King was slain. Clinton attended and spoke. So did Republican presidential candidate John McCain. After he left office, Obama missed the museum’s fiftieth anniversary gathering in honor of King’s death.)