Jay-Z, Or The Story From Selling Drugs To Being A Succes In Business
Jay-Z illustrates the story of a successful businessman
His fortune is worth 450 million dollars, he can drink coffee with Bill Gates in the morning and in the evening he can be seen at dinner with Warren Buffett. Jay-Z’s story: how a Brooklyn rapper turned music into hundreds of millions of dollars.
While passing through New York on the back seat of a Maybach luxury car, Jay-Z gazes at the streets of his hometown. The song “Empire State of Mind” , the anthem the rapper dedicated to the American metropolis, perfectly illustrates the road the rapper had to take from his modest Brooklyn apartment to his office in Times Square, says the U.S. newspaper The Wall Street Journal.
Having reached 40 years of age, he continues to sing rap, molding perfectly as the binder between an artist and a multinational executive. Until now he had partnerships with HP, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Reebok and Microsoft, and Forbes magazine even put him on the cover of the U.S. edition of “400 richest Americans,” although his 450 million dollars are not sufficient enough for him to enter into this select club.
Jay-Z on the cover of Forbes magazine
Jay-Z has his own music company, Roc Nation, a substantial package of shares in the New Jersey Nets basketball team, for which he paid $ 4.5 million, and a chain of sports themed bars called 40/40 Club.
He also maintains operational and creative control over the clothing line called Rocaware, a business that he sold in 2007 in exchange for $ 204 million. He also controls, along with another partner, the cosmetics line Carol’s Daughter.
He had a hard time at first
The rapper says that early in his entrepreneurial career he was regarded with a lot of skepticism by business partners, but now, he admits that he feels as good in the executive offices and he feels on his neighborhood streets.
However, he is frustrated by the little respect that rap is gaining in the upper circles of society due to the associated licentious texts and violent images.
But, he says, when socializing with leading figures from the business and politics scene, he is an “ambassador” of the hip-hop culture. Shawn Carter, his real name, will launch his first prose book which is entitled “Decoded“.
The book will be launched next month and wants to be a hybrid between musical history, social commentary and the rapper’s memoires, based on his transition from drug trafficking to the music industry.
The material of 336 pages, in which Microsoft will invest a million dollars for marketing, will revolve around 36 of the artist’s songs and will abound in allusions, slang expressions and double-meaning language. The rapper refused to write a classical business strategy book. “Our ambition, that of the hip-hop culture, was to not mold to the corporate principles and values, but to take this world and rebuild according to our own feelings,” says the former Brooklyn drug dealer.
The launch of this book fits perfectly into the strategy used in the past by Jay-Z, which is to be supported by financially potent partners, but all the while having full control over the creation are of the project. Financial companies are involved in such projects in order to associate their image with that of the famous rapper.
He started from talent-scouting
The music career of Jay-Z began in 1996 when no major label was interested in offering him a contract. Therefore, together with two other partners, he decided to launch an independent house called Roc-A-Fella Records. Soon, he signed a partnership with the famous record company Def Jam Records, whose chief executive he becomes in 2005.
In 2007 he would be leaving Def Jam and beginning negotiations in secret, with the great events promoter Live Nation. The contract, for which he received 25 million dollars in signing and another 5 million dollars per year, allowed him to set up the company Roc Nation. The new investment focuses on managing and launching new musical talents.
Like many other companies in the music industry, the company of the rapper tries to diversify its income sources in order to avoid being forced to rely solely on funds from the sale of music material.
Roc Nation is responsible for managing young artists whom are under contract, such as the rapper J. Cole, Willow Smith (the daughter of Will Smith), the British rock band The Ting Tings and Rihanna. In general, Jay-Z handles all the creative side of his partnerships and is shaping his public image based on these partnerships.
The partnership between the rapper and the Cristal champagne brand had become so closely that, for example, when he was invited to radio stations to promote an artist or to launch a new music piece, he was served with champagne. “It’s morning. I don’t drink champagne all day, every day,” Jay-Z was forced to say.
After an executive at Cristal made a racist remark about the rappers who drink the company’s champagne, Jay-Z immediately dropped the contract only to sign with Budweiser, just so that he could “shatter that myth.” However, he now admits that the combination of his image with that of a beer brand can be “too much”.
About his musical future, the rapper in Brooklyn says he will continue to sing about the topics that made him famous: drugs, giant business deals and the luxury that currently surrounds him.
“I do nothing but describe a scene, but the core of the story is the message I wish to send out. It’s almost like a movie. Location: Southern France. Action: The guy in the adjacent district of New York, which has failed to finish high school and the life he leads now, “he says.
Jay-Z’s businesses
* The Rocawear clothing line.
* The bars 40/40 Club.
* The cosmetics line Carol’s Daughter.
* Owns a stake in the NBA team the New Jersey Nets.
* Has investments in the real estate project – J-Hotel in New York.
