Why We Can't Stop Loving Jay-Z
No one disagrees about Jay-Z's loyalty to capitalism, Black people or even himself. We just don't want it to be true.
There are very few miseries I have not suffered.
I have spooned cereal and water into my mouth while sitting in a home without power. I have been unjustly arrested while a Black police officer I considered a friend pretended I was a stranger. I have stood over the still-warm corpse of my sister, staring silently into the bullet hole in her face. I have been called a nigger by a watermelon-seed-spitting white boy who probably would have preferred to slap me had he not been carrying a Confederate flag. I have been in a jail cell. I’ve had my intelligence questioned and worn shoes worthy of ridicule.
I am not tall. Or handsome. Or charismatic. Or athletic. Or eloquent.
I am Black. I live in America.
And after all of it—the poverty, the pain, the discomfort, the injustice, the spite, the grief—I still believe, without exaggeration, that I am one of the luckiest men alive. I am so thoroughly blessed and so highly favored that I don't have to talk myself into optimism. Every day I've been alive has run on an inheritance I never applied for, one that supersedes every millisecond of anguish or despair. The older I get, the more that guilt creeps in—I didn't earn any of this. Some days it makes me sad, knowing most people will never get to stand where I'm standing. But mostly what I feel is gratitude for a fortune that was never mine to earn in the first place. It was just mine.
I am loved.
Being loved completely and without precondition is a superpower. Everyone has moments of uncertainty and self-doubt, I’m sure. But there’s a kind of freedom in knowing there is nothing in the entire universe powerful enough to separate you from the most valuable thing you actually own. Perhaps the closest analogy is being born with a perfect face, a billion dollars, and—excuse my language, but it might be the most apt analogy—a big dick. Not an “impressively sized” penis or a phallus of adequate girth. But a big dick. It is a level of certainty and a doubtlessness that cannot be measured.
And yes, I am surrounded by love.
I have spent my entire life encased in this invisible deflector shield. My mother loves me. My sisters dote on me from afar. I do not have to dream of a smart, beautiful wife who is so enamored with me that she can hornswoggle herself into believing that her husband is handsome. I don’t wish for children who think their father hung the moon. My 80-year-old aunties spend hours standing over their stoves canning homemade jelly because they want their nephew’s biscuits to taste like the light of our ancestors’ love. My nieces and nephews want to hear their uncle Mike’s dumb jokes. I have cousins and friends and childhood neighbors and dope boys and teachers who genuinely believe in me. They forced me to believe in me.
They stood in front of America’s oncoming traffic to make sure my path was clear. They crisscrossed their arms under every cliff and made me believe there was nothing I could not conquer—not even gravity—because their love was stronger. They gave me the temerity to jump. I could not fall. They would not let me.
There is nothing that would make them stop loving me. That’s how love works. Show them footage of me on a killing spree across 10 states, cursing Jesus’ name on live television and coming home with a white woman on my arm—their love wouldn't just evaporate. They might want to know why I did it. Some might even want to murder my victims again. Most of them would condemn my actions. I might be a murdering, blaspheming Becky-lover to you, but to the people who carried me on their shoulders and in their hearts, I am the person in whom they invested their unconditional love.
I belong to them.
I can’t possibly imagine anyone feeling more loved than me, but maybe you can.
Imagine if you loved someone so much their success made your chest hurt. Imagine watching them climb up from powerless days of cereal and water into the future they dreamed of. That you dreamed for them. With them. Can you even fathom how it feels to have unequivocal proof that the love you invested was not wasted?
Loving a bookish Black boy from down the street is easy when his book shows up on your TikTok feed or his face turns up on CNN. But what if the beneficiary of your unsolicited investment of love was a non-murdering, non-blasphemous, Black-woman-marrying billionaire who just happens to be the greatest rapper who ever lived and breathed?
Can you imagine loving someone like that?
Now stop.
See how hard it is?
Jay-Z is my GOAT.
Some people love syllable-dense “lyrical miracle” rappers while others listen to hip-hop for the beats, production or vibes. But as a writer, poet and hip-hop head, I almost exclusively care about the emcee’s words. I prefer well-thought-out, complex lyricism that actually mean things—regardless of the message’s import. And Jay-Z makes the exact kind of hip-hop that I like.
I am intimately familiar with his entire catalog, and his lyrics served as the soundtrack to my 20s and 30s. I’ve paid to see him in concert. I’d pay to see him again. I rank Black Thought as the best emcee who ever lived and vacillate between favorites. But in my opinion, Jay-Z is the greatest rapper of all time.
That’s all.
Unlike many people of the internet age, I don’t have a parasocial relationship with Jay-Z. I don’t think I’ve ever worn a fitted Yankees cap. And, as someone who fits the description of a “nerd” before the term was co-opted to describe anime-watchers who know more about Clark Kent’s Infinite Earths storyline than Cam Newton’s Superman-like 2010 college season, I was wearing crisp pairs of jeans and button-ups long before Hov’s Black album.
