5 Things We Learned in the Jay Z Rap Radar Interview about Black Excellence

2017 has definitely been a truly remarkable year if you’re a Jay Z fan. With the drop of what a lot of people already consider a classic album,  4:44 ,  a plethora of music videos ( more like small documentaries) and a lot of  very enlightening footnotes, we should all feel like we have gotten more than what we expected.

But, instead of talking about what he had to say in the album about Kanye West and his fight with Solange in the elevator, we are going to talk about the top 5 things we learned in the Jay Z Rap Radar interview about promoting  black excellence.  For us, that was the biggest take away from the album.

1. Self Hate and 2. Owning Your Own

In this Rap Radar interview, Jay Z  discusses why he think his streaming company Tidal gets a bad rap over other streaming companies such as Spotify and Apple Music,  how our culture could grow if we would stop hating on one another, and why he bought Lavar Balls sneakers.

 

“LaVar Ball, he said ‘I’ma start my own company.’ Everybody else said, ‘You should sign with Nike!’ Now, he may go about things wrong, he may have a big mouth, he may rub everything — but I bought three pair. I didn’t get them, I didn’t get them, but that man has a vision of his own. Why wouldn’t I support him? Why wouldn’t I support him? He feels like he could move culture and his son got a big enough game, got a big enough brand that they can do it. Nike had to start somewhere when we, us, want to start our own s—. That s— is puzzling to me. I sit back and I’m like, ‘This makes no sense.’ Why can’t he start his sneaker? ‘Oh, these dumb sneakers are terrible.’ They wasn’t any more terrible than — I don’t want to, I’m not being negative toward anyone. I’ve seen some bad sneakers from Under Armour, I’ve seen some bad sneakers from — I’ve seen bad Michael Jordan sneakers, horrible.

“Michael Jordan is obviously the greatest at making (sneakers). And at some point he was selling through Nike, and at some point, he broke away. He started building the Jordan Brand. And I’m sure that was difficult. And I’m sure people at that time was like, ‘You playing yourself. You’re going to leave Nike?’ Man, all due respect, f— Nike. And I don’t mean personally. I mean f— the thing. Everyone has this reverence toward these things. I’m sure when we started Roc Nation, everyone said (to join) Universal or Def Jam. We built the brand. We are culture. Nothing moves without us. We just continue to give it away. And it’s cool, we can still participate. Nike still works with Jordan. It’s just the nature of our relationship has to change.

“I didn’t even tell people to stop using the money phone. I didn’t say that. It doesn’t say that anywhere. I had to listen again. How is this being misinterpreted,” he questioned. ” I just said it ain’t money to us. It ain’t. That’s just an honest statement. Money to us is me and my three friends on the floor in Golden State. Not because the seats are expensive but because that’s what we’re doing here. You never seen that. Or building brands and pushing them forward. That can’t be the end-all. That can’t be our goal, to get money and show it on the Internet. That’s some corny shit. You can do it. I’ve been saying it. ‘Chains is cool to cop, but more important is lawyer fees.’ That’s my first album. I’ve always been trying to give people game. Here, learn from my experiences.”

 

Y’all wanna make the BOOK PHONE a CHALLENGE???…Then make it happen!!! #bookphonechallenge

A post shared by Lord Jamar Allah (@lordjamar) on Jul 29, 2017 at 9:07am PDT

 

4. Our Culture Banding Together

In this segment Jay Z talks a lot about his also controversial Jewish lines on the album and how we need to stick together and work together as a culture[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Why Jewish people got it so right as a community – was when they left. The people that got out – you know after the war were her by themselves. So they were forced to ban together. Like someone tried to kill off their entire race. Can you imagine. Like kill off their entire race. So they had no choice but to banned together and worked together  – that working together help them to get a power system, a power base within their own community. I lived in Marcy – Ive seen umm…. when a jewish community was built on Lee Avenue and it was two blocks. Its  a beautiful community from across the street. No directly across the street from Marcy projects all the way to the bridge. So Ive seen what was built from a small community of people working together. Thats what Im trying to tell our people. “

5. Don’t let anyone rush your process and believe in yourself

Lastly, what we took away from the last segment of the interview as entrepreneurs was to believe in yourself and not let anyone rush your process. In this part, Jay z talks about mistakes he made with Tidal and the remarks he gets with owning the Brooklyn Nets.

So this is the Top 5 things we got from watching this great Interview with Jay -z.  Let us know your thoughts below.

You can Listen to part one here.