“With
education
comes
ref inement,”
Jay-Z observes late one Friday afternoon.
He’s lounging on a couch in a studio at the
Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment
complex on the far west side of Manhattan
and speaking between nibbles of a takeout
salad in a plastic container and sips from
a bottle of water. In his everyday speech,
as in his raps, Jay-Z is inclined toward
aphorisms, the compressed expression of
complicated ideas, delivered with rhetorical
flair. It’s hard-earned wisdom, graced by a
poet’s touch.
He is relaxing after a typically jam-
packed day that included a photo shoot, an
interview, and a meeting about his potential
involvement in a forthcoming video game.
He celebrated his 39th birthday the night
before with the staff of his Rocawear
clothing line, so a mild fatigue has set in.
Slender and six feet three inches tall, Jay-Z is
an imposing figure, even in relative repose.
He’s wearing distressed jeans that hang
loosely from the middle of his hips, black
sneakers, and a long-sleeved black T-shirt
that has replaced the pristine short-sleeved
white one he wore before changing for his
photo shoot. The look is studiously casual…
until you glance at his left wrist and notice
a diamond watch so thick it could pass for a
weight band.
The winter sky is growing gray in the
bank of windows behind him as the sun sets
over the Hudson River. Jay-Z returns to the
narrative of what, in the 19th century, would
have been called his sentimental education,
the education of his emotional life. That
journey to refinement began in the rugged
Marcy Projects in Brooklyn’s Bedford-
Stuyvesant district, and now continues in
arenas and boardrooms, in posh homes and
VIP hideaways, around the world.
Jay-Z feels comfortable in all of these
realms. “I’ve never looked at myself and
said that I need to be a certain way to
be around a certain sort of people,” he
explains. “I’ve always wanted to stay true
to myself, and I’ve managed to do that.
People have to accept that. I collect art,
and I drink wine…things that I like that I
had never been exposed to. But I never said,
‘I’m going to buy art to impress this crowd.’
That’s just ridiculous to me. I don’t live
my life like that, because how could you be
happy with yourself?”
Staying true to yourself might stand as
a succinct summary of Jay-Z’s philosophy
of success. The notion goes back to
Shakespeare’s “To thine own self be
true,” and further back than that to the
Greeks. But for Jay-Z, it has an urgently
contemporary meaning. Even, or perhaps,
especially, in recessionary times, amid the
thousands of entertainment and lifestyle
choices consumers have available to them,
what separates winners from losers is a
commitment to a single proposition: You
are the product. If people believe in you,
they will believe in what you create. Jay-Z
understands this and is down with it.
By selling nearly 40 million albums and
building a business empire that extends far
beyond music into clothing, fragrances,
the New Jersey Nets, sports bars, liquor,
and hotels (to name just a few of his
seemingly innumerable investments),
Jay-Z has transformed himself into one of
the most potent brands in the world. But
that brand retains its power only if people
remain convinced that the product they
are purchasing somehow genuinely reflects
Jay-Z and his tastes. As he famously put it in
one of his raps, “I’m not a businessman/I’m a
business, man.”
“My brands are an extension of me,”
he says. “They’re close to me. It’s not like
running GM, where there’s no emotional
attachment.” The reference is apt, given the
government’s ongoing potential bailout of
two major automobile companies. Jay-Z notes
that resonance with a pause and a chuckle.
“My thing is related to who I am as
a person,” he says. “The clothes are an
extension of me. The music is an extension of
me. All my businesses are part of the culture,
so I have to stay true to whatever I’m feeling
at the time, whatever direction I’m heading
in. And hopefully, everyone follows.”
In conversation, Jay-Z’s speech is
slower, calmer, and more deliberate
than in the propulsive, deep-voiced,
and often incendiary raps that have
made him a titan in the world of hip-hop, a man whose sales and staying power
have elevated him above all but a handful
of potential rivals. He’s an engaged and
animated speaker, quick to touch you in a
friendly way to emphasize a point. ››
MR. ROC-A-FELLA
Jay-Z, photographed at
Chelsea Piers Studio in
New York City, December 2008
