JAY-Z Page 17
4:44, Roc Nation, 2017.
4:44 was released on June 30, 2017, through an exclusive partnership between Sprint and JAY-Z’s streaming service, TIDAL. This is far and away JAY-Z’s most personal, and private, record to date. It could be argued that it is more of a Shawn Carter record than a JAY-Z product. The title refers either to a predawn moment in which Carter was inspired to write the title track, one of the most sincere and personal records he has ever written, or it is a sly reference to the address of the Standard Hotel (444 West 13th Street) where the infamous elevator confrontation between him and sister-in-law Solange occurred. Or it’s an allusion to both. 4:44 is about life, family, regret, and redemption. Here JAY-Z is not afraid to show how he feels about his love life or the politics of race in America. “The Story of O.J.,” and its attendant animated music video, is one of Jay’s most direct forays into the world of American racial politics. It is a stunning achievement both lyrically and visually. Several music videos accompany this record, including visuals for “MaNyfaCedGod” and “Kill Jay Z.” (Note the artist’s new spelling, “JAY-Z,” symbolically killing “Jay Z.”) The music video for “Family Feud,” with a Flying Lotus score, was directed by the enormously gifted Ava DuVernay. No I.D. produces the entire album along with JAY-Z himself, and James Blake, Dominic Maker, and Mount Kimbie earned a few co-producer credits along the way.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Yo, I’m gon’ spit these acknowledgments
Like hip hop was always meant
To heal the breach between emotion and emolument
(When I first learned that word from Du Bois it seemed heaven sent)
First off, I got to thank my editor Elisabeth Dyssegaard
The perfect guard of my literary art
To finish from start with such vision and heart
And to the greatest literary agent in the land
Tanya McKinnon got the canon in hand
Never shootin’ blanks when she got her cerebral cannon in hand
Like my man, Alan Bradshaw, he’s no Stan
When it comes to taking a grammatical stand
Make them sentences land perfectly in this verbal gymnastic stand
And countless thanks to the ladies who feed this nice rhyme
Jen Enderlin, my publisher, is my partner in crime
No really, she is, we spit Godfather lines
While she signs off on my most challenging lines
Laura Clark, her captain at sea, sails right on through
Takes books to market and makes them do what they do
And the Grand Dame Sally Richardson always comes through
Her blood royal blue, her vision so true
And because of the real Godfather, Don Weisberg, I can ball
His faith in me at St. Martin’s really started it all
He gets in the foxhole and doesn’t lurk in the hall
Gabi Gantz, my lively publicist, keeps my name in the press
And Martin Quinn, my marvelous marketer, makes it all look fresh
And to Lena Shekhter, with your production I can say we are blessed
Jennifer Fernandez edits that production the best
To David Rotstein that cover you designed is a straight up classic
To Jennifer Simington, you may have copyedited us into a classic
And Steven Seighman, that dope text design will leave all readers ecstatic
To Killer Mike, Marc Lamont Hill and James Braxton Peterson
Y’all put me on to Jay when I had only paid attention to God’s son
That changed my mind, made me realize the full sweep of Hov’s genius
Thank you Hov for letting me sample these words, oh yes you’re a genius
(You and Queen Bey, despite us trying to tell you, have no idea what you mean to us)
To Pharrell for that magical Foreword and for offering your trust
That these pages I wrote are rhetorically just
Thanks to Desiree Perez, mighty Boss Lady, and Jana Fleishman, sublime ruler of pub
Appreciate that COO support and introducing me to your amazing club
Marie Plaisime and Peterson put in the research to help me craft this book
Plaisime did work in class and searched through them books
Peterson supplied me with words, wit and wisdom and countless rhetorical hooks
Michelle Jean-Paul kept me up on social media and showed the big brain it took
To write those words with all the scholarship and love that it took
Thanks to legends Quest Love, Queen Latifah, Skip Gates and Rev. Al Sharpton too
Gifted lady Tamron Hall and my man Common too
(One of the illest rappers to ever bless us with the knowledge that you do)
To Spike Lee and Tyler Perry, great men, for the seeds that you sowed
Thanks to all of you for them blurbs and the love that y’all showed
And to my precious loving family that helps carry the load
My nieces and nephew, my cousins, aunts and uncles all
My grandkids, grandnephews and grandnieces—all y’all
(Whaddup grandies Layla, Mosi and Max, growing so tall)
My great sons Mike and Mwata, my daughter Maisha, hey boo
My Mama Addie Mae for the love you give to all
(And Mama Susan Taylor, Big Brother Khephra Burns, my dear friends
Lost my brother Everett Dyson-Bey, spent 30 years in the pen
But nothing can kill your memory that means so much to us in the end
I got your only son Everett Dyson brilliantly illustrating with his pen
That boy so good I got to work with him again
My brothers Brian and Gregory still got mad love for these men
And to the Grandest Matriarch of them all we give you your just due
Activist and speaker, brilliant writer, the glue
Marcia Louise Dyson, we love you for all that you do
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chapter 1
Walter McDougall, Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585–1828 (New York: Harper, 2004).
Tatiana Adeline Thieme, “The Hustle Economy: Informality, Uncertainty and the Geographies of Getting By,” Progress in Human Geography (February 2017).
Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Verso, 1990).
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, “Playing the Violence Card,” New York Times, April 5, 2012.
Jay-Z, Decoded (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2010).
Chapter 2
Jay-Z, Decoded (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2010).
Imani Perry, “Putting the ‘Public’ in ‘Public Intellectual,’” Chronicle of Higher Education, June 6, 2010.
“Oprah Talks to Jay-Z,” O magazine, October 2009, https://www.oprah.com/omagazine/oprah-interviews-jay-z-october-2009-issue-of-o-magazine/.
Albert “Prodigy” Johnson, My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy (New York: Touchstone, 2011).
Chapter 3
Shawn Carter, “Jay Z: For Father’s Day, I’m Taking On the Exploitative Bail Industry,” Time, June 16, 2017, https://time.com/4821547/jay-z-racism-bail-bonds/.
Jay-Z, “Jay-Z: The Criminal Justice System Stalks Black People Like Meek Mill,” New York Times, November 17, 2017.
REFORM Alliance, “REFORM Alliance & Pennsylvania State Representatives Unveil Bipartisan Legislation to Reform State Probation & Parole System,” press release, PRNewsWire, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/reform-alliance—pennsylvania-state-representatives-unveil-bipartisan-legislation-to-reform-state-probation—parole-system-300823231.html.
Bill Cosby, “Address at the NAACP’ on the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education,” speech, May 17, 2004, Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C.
Michael Eric Dyson, Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves and Demons of Marvin Gaye (New York: Basic Books, 2004).
Michael Eric Dyson, Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost I
ts Mind? (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005).
David Garrow, “The Troubling Legacy of Martin Luther King,” Standpoint, May 30, 2019, https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/june-2019/the-troubling-legacy-of-martin-luther-king/.
David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: HarperCollins, 1986).
Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).
ALSO BY MICHAEL ERIC DYSON AND AVAILABLE FROM ST. MARTIN’S PRESS
What Truth Sounds Like: RFK, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America
Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Eric Dyson is one of America’s premier public intellectuals and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Tears We Cannot Stop and What Truth Sounds Like. He occupies the distinguished position of University Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, and is a contributing editor of The New Republic and ESPN’s The Undefeated. Ebony magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential African Americans and one of the 150 most powerful blacks in the nation. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
FOREWORD by Pharrell
INTRODUCTION: “Allow Me to Re-Introduce Myself”
CHAPTER 1: “I’m the Definition of It”
HUSTLING
CHAPTER 2: “I Paint Pictures with Poems”
POETRY
CHAPTER 3: “Somewhere in America”
POLITICS
EPILOGUE: “What’s Better Than One Billionaire?”
Note
Annotated Discography
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Also by Michael Eric Dyson and Available from St. Martin’s Press
About the Author
Copyright
First published in the United States by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
JAY-Z: MADE IN AMERICA. Copyright © 2019 by Michael Eric Dyson. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Endpaper art: crown © NSTdsgn/Shutterstock.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-23096-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-27088-7 (ebook)
e-ISBN 9781250270887
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First Edition: November 2019