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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2370 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Capitalism Has Failed, and TIDAL is Proof, and Oh Also About Our Imminent Doom

She's got a lot that needs to be said, and she's amassed a damning pile of factoids, and her basic argument is that black people are being fucked by the system, and all this is true... but the argument at the heart of her whirlwind (Jay-Z is a fraud therefore capitalism has failed) doesn't ring true and doesn't bolster her facts.

    Hip-hop is about hustling and faking it ’til you make it. Entrepreneurship undergirds the culture, as does flaunting your success through conspicuous consumption and over-the-top displays of wealth. Hip-hop has evolved from talking about street-level drug deals and buying rope chains to discussing real estate investments, purchasing high-brow art, and travel by private jet. The culture has always been about “getting money,” but along the way, hip-hop became hyper-capitalist. In this way, it may be the most quintessentially American art form.

Jay-Z bought Tidal for $56m. He sold a third of it to Sprint for $200m. Part of the deal is Sprint has to pay $75m a year towards an "artist marketing fund." He could be forced to divest the other two thirds for free, pay a fine of $144m and still come out ahead because one of the artists they market the hardest is his wife.

I mean, Dr. Dre got rich convincing white kids that shitty headphones were worth more money than good ones. Jay-Z talked Sprint into thinking the problem with Spotify's business model was it didn't charge customers enough. I'd say black entrepreneurialism is doing fine and dandy by Jay-Z's example.

Which does not negate Ms. Harrison's many other points. But it doesn't really support them either.

Dude bought into Uber at Series B ffs