Jay-Z Bites Back at ‘Eat the Rich’ Rhetoric: ‘We’re Not Gonna Be Tricked Out of Our Position’
www.rollingstone.com
Jay-Z took on criticism of his capitalism in a conversation about his new song with DJ Khaled.

Before was the American dream, ‘Pull yourself by the bootstraps, and you can make yourself…you can make it in America,’ all these lies that America told us our whole life. And then when we start getting in, they tried to lock us out of it. They start inventing words like you know, ‘capitalist,’ you know, things like that. I mean, you know, we’ve been called ‘n–ger’ and ‘monkeys’ and shit. I don’t care; those words y’all come up with. Y’all gotta come up with stronger words.

We’re not gonna be tricked out of our position. Y’all locked us out. Y’all created a system that, you know, doesn’t include us. We said fine. We went our alternate route. We created this music. We did our thing, you know, we hustle, we fucking killed ourselves to get to this space. And, you know, now it’s like, you know, you know, ‘Eat the rich,’ and, man, we’re not stopping, so that evolution is, you know, from us.

  • JuryNullification [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    "We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism."

    :fred-hampton:

      • LGOrcStreetSamurai [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        One of the most vile ways to co-opt a genuinely dope Aesthetic for the most Milquetoast cultural event. It’s all really gross to show up at the super bowl, an event about celebratory destruction of Predominantly black bodies for predominately white entertainment, in the dress of a historical movement about black (and honestly everyone else) empowerment. The evil of that is layered.

        • LaGG_3 [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don't laugh!). And more and more frequently German bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the “national-German” Marx, who, they claim, educated the labor unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of waging a predatory war!

      • Rem [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Conservatives were so perfirmatively mad lol

    • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Can I play devil's advocate as a fellow and a peer? I really like what Fred Hampton has to say here. However, if I were in a room with Jay-Z it would be difficult for me to explain this to him. If his story is to be believed, and I reckon it is, Jay-Z had to fight and claw his way out of horrible shit by doing horrible shit to not be in predatory, manipulative poverty. If I put myself in his shoes, I can imagine being demeaned every step of the way by people with money and I can imagine basking in the brilliance when I became those peoples' boss. When you come from a world of black poverty, overcome the odds, and drag people around you into black excellence, it would give purpose to your life. So when some rando like me comes up to you and says "you need change your vision from black excellence to solidarity with the working class for a movement that has yet to coalesce." I would not be surprised when he tells me to eat dogshit. If I spoke theoretically of the ghettos that the system upholds, he'd talk about his actual experience and sacrifice/investment for places that he knows 1st hand. I think of Jay-Z as the billionaire most difficult to dislike.

        • AvgMarighellaEnjoyer [he/him,any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          also, to your point that his record label was owned by white people or that finance is dominated by white people: even if it were black people all the way up that still doesn't mean black liberation. a group of people can't be liberated because 10% of it are exploiting the other 90%.

      • mazdak
        ·
        1 year ago

        deleted by creator

      • JuryNullification [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I get where you’re coming from. I’m a white guy, which is why I just posted the Fred Hampton quote and didn’t offer any criticism of my own. This is kind of similar to the “Hannibal Buress is a landlord” shit from a few years ago, which I will draw on for the following:

        :stupidpol:

        Dudes who look like me should not be specifically attacking people like Jay-Z, Hannibal Burress, and Ru Paul for their shit. Attacking their class as a whole is good. Attacking systems of power is good. Singling them out when the Waltons, Kochs, Gateses, Musks, and Bezoses are out there doing shit that’s at least as bad and on greater scale is shitty. We shouldn’t carve out exemptions for millionaires/billionaires of color, but spending all of your time shitting on Ru Paul for investing in fracking while Charles Koch draws breath is reaching for low-hanging fruit.

        I think the best thing I can do in a situation like this is to elevate black voices who criticize the systems of power these people exploit and promote working class solidarity across racial lines.