Originally posted and cross-posted @ Ms. Queenly’s. What I would like to do for this blog is look at some of Jay-Z lyrics, but I don’t have the patience for that sh*t right now…
Initial thoughts
I’ve been meaning to write this for a couple of months now. I read this article about Jay-Z a while back and every time I think about it I get pissed off. Now that he’s a millionaire, money made off all that trash he spouted, he’s saying he regrets the lyrics of songs like “Big Pimpin'”–urggggggggghhhhhhhhh! PISSES ME OFF! He gets rich off degrading women and promoting materialism in the fucked up capitalist American economy and pushing the agenda of a” street mentality” lifestyle that he himself doesn’t lead and he ‘can’t believe’ some of the shit he’s said and rapped about?!
Jay-Z says, “Some [lyrics] become really profound when you see them in writing. Not ‘Big Pimpin’. That’s the exception”. Well, my “brotha”, if you look really hard you’ll see that it’s really messed up that this is how you made your fortune.
You can blame the people who bought his music in the first place. But you can’t deny the origin: Jay-Z himself and the record label that produced him and the society that supports and allows the record label’s existence.
You can’t talk about Jay-Z without talking about Beyoncé.
A match made in heaven: She’s a hoochie and he’s a (supposedly) recovering misogynist. These are two of the richest and most prominent Black people in the United States and maybe even the world. There is some question as to why that it. I’ll tell why it is in part: it’s because we live in a society that is permeated with ignorance and white dominance. The only way Black people can have anything in this country is by selling out their own people.
Another view–on the positive side, (if there even is one)
You could say Jay-Z has grown for the better. Better late than never. As for Beyoncé, there are people, women in particular, who dance like that. More power to them. It can be sexy, empowering, self-expressing when it’s not raunchy, tasteless, and/or underaged. It’s hard to say because all you see is her hip rolling, scantily clad, booty popping everything and everywhere. If not that, then she’s advertising something, or singing about her man and how she likes being a trophy bitch and finds that empowering.
I’m not gone lie, I’ve got a few Beyoncé songs on my iPod and at least one censored Jay-Z song (as if it makes a difference). I still listen to some of that shit. “Crazy in Love”, “Baby Boy”, “Me, Myself, and I”, “Diva”, even “Put a Ring on It” because of that catchy hook. Because I’m ashamed, I won’t say which Jay-Z song, though I will say that it isn’t the worst. Did I pay for any of them? NO WAY!
Positivity aside–reality
So Jay-Z has had an epiphany. Great….but too late. The damage has been done, the idiot. Beyoncé–that’s whole other discussion for a whole different day coming sometime in the future.
At the end of the day, they gone do what they do and I’mma think what I think about what they do as Black public icons.
Forever real,
Ms. Queenly
Elia's Diamonds 