JAY-Z might as well have made his deal with Donald Trump.
JAY-Z could have made a deal with the KKK and people would still be like "Let's see what happens."
JAY-Z is a sellout.
JAY Z ain't never been shit.
JAY-Z this, JAY-Z that...in JAY-Z news...
That last quote came directly from one of his songs, The Blueprint 2.
I, for one, was initially surprised that JAY-Z had struck a deal between his RocNation imprint and the NFL. But that surprise quickly faded to disappointment in myself for actually being surprised.
Sure, the man has done a lot of philanthropy work. Some of it has been public while a lot of it has been conducted behind the scenes. He has helped other artists out of financial trouble and has been said to have spent millions on Meek Mill's legal fees while fighting for his release from prison.
Hell, he openly supported Colin Kaepernick, right?
He did, he says he still does, but this deal he has made with the NFL doesn't look like support. It looks like betrayal.
For a few days, I was of the camp who felt like there had to be more to this deal than what it looked like from the outside. JAY-Z turned down performing at the Super Bowl, seemingly in solidarity with Kaeperick. He literally rapped: "You need me, I don't need you/ every night we in the end zone/ tell the NFL we in stadiums, too." He'd become known for making power moves with a bigger picture in mind.
But he's also rapped these words: "I can't help the poor if I'm one of them/ so I got rich and gave back to me, that's the win-win." For me, that says it all.
Look, I'm not here to bash JAY-Z. He's doing what uber-wealthy people do, which is: whatever they want to do. To succeed in the arenas where he has you have to be ruthless, even unscrupulous to get what you want. If JAY-Z ultimately wants to own an NFL team, which is what is being reported, then this deal is probably the first step in that process. It's a fucked up deal but it is a deal that he is willing to do, albeit under the guise of NFL entertainment and improving on the league's so called social justice initiatives. Do I agree with it? Not at all. But JAY-Z is his own man and he has always done things, for good or bad, with his own best interests in mind.
Interesting side note: According to JAY-Z, he turned down performing at the Super Bowl in 2017 mainly because he didn't like the way the artist selection process worked.
Which brings me to those who support JAY-Z and this deal.
The NFL is a league that collectively colluded to banish Colin Kaepernick and punish any players that kneeled along with him or supported him during football games.
The NFL is full of owners that agreed with Trump when he referred to protesting players, who were mostly Black, as "son's of bitches" that should be fired.
The NFL is a league in which one of it's teams, the Miami Dolphins, blasted several JAY-Z records during practice after one of its players, Kenny Stills, publicly ripped the RocNation/ NFL deal. It's not clear if this was done as a joke by the coach, Brian Flores (who is Black), or as a message to Stills. The coach says he was using it as motivation because Stills wasn't performing well in camp.
The NFL is a league that, unlike the NBA and other sports leagues that encourage and promote activism and diversity, prefer their stars to stay behind their face masks and not take extreme political or social stances. Unless your name is Tom Brady.
So for a number of Black current and former players, commentators, analysts, pundits, talking heads, etc., to come out and not just support JAY-Z and support the deal but also throw Colin Kaepernick under the bus is appalling. Marcellus Wiley, a guy I used to really like, went as far as to say that Kaepernick was "not well enough versed in the subject because he never lived it".
Never lived it???
I know not everyone agrees (obviously) with the way Colin Kaepernick decided to protest against the injustices Black men and women in this country experience. I know not everyone agrees with the settlement he reached with the NFL. Some are saying that him taking whatever the settlement was is somewhat the equivalent to JAY-Z making this deal. But Colin Kaepernick put his entire career on the line for an issue that no one wanted to touch and that the NFL didn't want anyone to touch. He went up against the "shield" and sued the NFL and its owners for collusion. And while the reported less than $10 million settlement he took from the NFL raised a few eyebrows, the message that Kaepernick was kneeling for, lost millions for, lost his job for and sacrificed his public image for was well heard. In many ways, what Kaepernick started paved the way for JAY-Z to even be in a position to make this deal. So what is it that Kaepernick hasn't lived that JAY-Z has lived that disqualifies Kaepernick's role in this whole thing?
Marcellus Wiley also intimated that Kaepernick's unwillingness to sit down with, I guess, "learned individuals" who he feels are more educated on the struggle cost him credibility. He said that "we" (and I guess by that he meant the Black people who thought this movement was just about him trying to stay relevant) didn't know what Colin's leadership was like because he was "voiceless". He accused him and those who joined with him from the outset as being "misleading", saying that when Kaepernick was at the top of his game, he wasn't thinking about social justice. But when his time on the field was cut, people in the 49ers organization and some people around him were saying that Kaepernick wasn't sitting during the anthem in protest, but that he was "pouting" and that he was told to "at least kneel out of respect". Wiley claims that this was how the kneeling thing for Kaepernick started.
If anyone is lacking "credibility" in this whole thing, it's Marcellus Wiley. These comments were made on a show co-hosted by Jason Whitlock. If you don't know anything about Mr. Whitlock, look him up. He has always been disproportionately critical of Kaepernick's protest, calling him an "attention whore" and calling his supporters "Caper-nicks". Like most of Kaepernick's detractors, Jason Whitlock often skirted the original reason why Kaepernick even began protesting, even going as far as to mock him and his protest on a Twitter post. Individuals like Whitlock have made a living off of disparaging young Black athletes while supporting the viewpoints that made Kaepernick's protest necessary in the first place. He would also go on to write an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal, basically saying that Kaepernick wasn't Black enough to protest for Black people against police brutality.
Here's the quote:
"...while Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey strategically chose Jackie Robinson to break baseball's color barrier, Mr. Kaepernick's protest came seemingly out of nowhere. Before the 2016 season, the mixed race quarterback, who'd been adopted by a suburban white family, was known mainly for his chisled abs, tattooed body and a touchdown celebration involving him kissing his biceps."
Clearly, this is not a quote from an unbiased viewpoint. If I didn't know who Jason Whitlock was, I would think he was a Black person writing about another Black person protesting social injustice.
And I think this is part of the polarizing responses we have seen from those who support JAY-Z and this deal with the NFL. Kaepernick, in my opinion, wasn't fully embraced as the face of the protest when he started it. There were a lot of questions about his intentions, especially since he didn't talk about his protest too much after he initially explained why he was doing it. It's true, Kaepernick is of mixed heritage and was adopted by a suburban white family. So yes, he hasn't lived in the same shoes as JAY-Z and many other Black rappers or Black athletes or Black entertainers. But that doesn't make JAY-Z, anyone considered more Black or someone else from "the streets" more qualified to be the face of such a protest. JAY-Z's platform is different, his goals are different. He moves in different circles. JAY-Z had nothing to lose by turning down the offer to perform at the Super Bowl. He was already JAY-Z. Colin Kaepernick became a national pariah, has been denied an opportunity to use his skills and talents to make a living by his former employer and reinvented himself as an activist to highlight an issue that had been claiming lives of unarmed Black men, women and children.
Think about this: what if JAY-Z were denied the opportunity to make such a deal with the NFL because they were not inclined to do business with a former drug dealer? This was actually a topic of conversation on Twitter when the news of the deal broke. It's hard to frame all of this because JAY-Z, as successful as he has been in the music industry and in the business world, represents the American underdog. A guy like him isn't supposed to be sitting at the same table with billionaires. And yet he is. Every time JAY-Z broke through a glass ceiling and stepped into room where white America said he didn't belong many of us, including myself, rooted for him. It always felt like a win for us. On the flip side, a guy like Colin Kaepernick shouldn't look like the stereotypical "Black thug", with his hair in cornrows or an Afro, protesting on behalf of Black people. And yet he is. But the same people who rooted for JAY-Z and are rooting for him now can't see past Colin's 'fro. Now Colin is in the way. No one questioned JAY-Z when he wore Kaepernick's jersey (except for probably Jason Whitlock, who once questioned the rappers values but doesn't see the same issue on this NFL deal). Now, the one person who gave JAY-Z a cause to get behind is being told to step out of the way and let a more qualified and credible person take over. Let's not get lost on the point of what this deal actually is. This is an entertainment deal. Adding that the deal would also help boost the NFL's Inspire to Change initiative is, in reality, a footnote.
This seems like that scene out of The Godfather II where Fredo Corleone betrays Michael Corleone in regards to business negotiations. Maybe that's why he's doing the deal. Maybe a ruthless betrayal to attain his goal, whatever that goal is, is worth the public backlash he's receiving. He's receiving a lot of support, too. And maybe this all becomes a good thing later down the line. But if it doesn't, he won't care. He'll either end the deal or decide it's better to continue because he's at the table. He'll probably either own a team or be part of an ownership group one day. And that is his prerogative.
But let's not forget what it cost for JAY-Z to be in that room. It cost Colin Kaepernick.
