You really can’t knock the hustle. We knew something was afoot once the umlaut showed up on streaming services. Jaÿ-Z began a brilliant rollout of tracks that provided the soundtrack for my adolescence to a new generation. While noticing this, I realized how few Jaÿ songs I played in the car and how my sons really did not know his music like that. I’d played enough clean edits of Nas and Biggie for the boys to have their favorite records but the third wing of the NY triumvirate was less familiar to them. And honestly I don’t know how that happened. For years, I cycled between streaming services—including TIDAL—and made playlists to enjoy every December 4th. Jaÿ’s music is an example of what I love most about hip-hop from my youth, it made you aspire. Jaÿ had my generation going to parties dressed like we were going to a job interview. All that hypercapitalist energy made you want to be somebody!
I changed trains at two fifth and a mystical throughline helped me clock everyone who was on their way to the show. Out of towners, gentrifiers, and those from the soil all had a certain look of anticipation as we stood on the train platform. One cat wearing a Knicks jersey, fitted, and cable link exemplified my feeling of how Jaÿ’s concert is a continuation of a top tier NY summer. We piled onto the train and I overheard conversations of folks who came up from Baltimore, Atlanta, flew in from Vancouver, and Seattle. It’s another glimpse of how the specific taps into universality. Jaÿ wove tales of surviving Brooklyn that seamlessly fit into American mythology and everywhere where Horatio Alger echoes.
I watched the show with its brilliant use of videos interspersed with American flags, urban life, and crosses and saw an artist using his medium to communicate a problem to a people he helped lull to sleep. Jaÿ delivered another freestyle with a critique for his critics turning the accusation of being a sell out on its head by acknowledging the sold out show he headlines. Hearing him point out that his detractors prolly had an Amazon account and therefore are hypocritical for criticizing his business dealings with Target made me think about the dangerous trajectory of that line of thought. It is a line of thought that I believe Jaÿ shares with his detractors. It is not productive to demand perfection from one another. What some call contradictions, I see as complexities. I taught and ministered to children on the same Brooklyn streets Jaÿ illustrated with hopes of providing a path away from those realities. When I was in high school, I protested the building of the Barclays Center not knowing that I would take my kids there later in life. I am mindful of my complicity and understand that I will never reduce my participation in harm to zero. Yet we still must have space to challenge each other to do better. If a rebuke is going to be met with a retelling of my faults, then what is the point of keeping each other on point?
I met up with two of my friends from our Hip-Hop discord channel and our conversation eventually drifted toward abolition. Jaÿ is often rightfully criticized for believing capitalism is our way out rather than our cage but with the stakes as high as they are (and always have been?) I’m also tired of cannibalizing. We spend so much time picking each other apart because we disagree on solutions rather than embracing those who also recognize that there is a problem. The forces that seek our destruction have put their differences aside in the name of their common goal. We have an obligation to each other. An obligation that is fulfilled in the midst of our dynamic, never arriving selves. There is always room for us to get better and there is always room for us to celebrate one another.
In my most generous thoughts, I think of Shawn Carter as a man who embodies the American definition of success and overcame insurmountable odds to do so. If you experience that kind of winning, you would want to lay the blueprint out so that others can trace your steps as best as they can. I can see his articulation of financial freedom as a form of generosity and inspiration to others. I know entrepreneurs who came up in similar circumstances whose ambition is undergirded by “Jaÿ made it, I can too!” Confessedly, whenever I have success in my career, I play something from Jaÿ’s catalog to celebrate.
I went to the concert to celebrate my brother’s 40th birthday. We talked about being friends since 7th grade, my first year at our school. I mentioned how Volume 2 came out that year and its popularity made my transition into a new school easier. He remarked how there weren’t a lot of us at that school and I shared how my strategy of getting through was to not pay attention to how few in number we were. My mindset is best captured by Jaÿ’s articulation on “Pound Cake”, “Less is more…it’s plenty of us.” As my son begins middle school in parallel circumstances, I hope he finds similar rocket fuel.
It is not easy being in a new environment and the difficulty increases when the ceiling they try to place over us is so low. I live my life largely unconcerned with such low expectations and am training my sons to move through the apartheid with the appropriate armor. The gravity of oppression intends to crush our bones and our spirits, it is up to us to remind ourselves of our greatness and to teach our children that their own excellence is accessible.
