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.
I don't think anyone would have much of a problem with Jaz-Z being rich. You don't see LeBron and Oprah in the dunk tank, and they're both billionaires who happen to also be black people. Where this becomes a problem is using this language of oppression, as in somehow "eat the rich" suddenly became a thing as soon as black folks got some money. It's even more sociopathic when you consider that there probably aren't a bunch of leftists out there harassing Jay-Z and that this is some kind of publicity stunt to sell more records. Like, we have enough real racism in the US, bro, you don't really need to make up more. He's making himself out to be some kind of victim.
Complexities in the sense of how he sees himself versus the reality of it all.
Of course he's a billionaire shit head justifying it in whatever way he can, but the additional layers of what he's telling himself to make it seem like it's somehow a good thing is, idk, sort of interesting to dissect a bit.