HOV DID-JAY-Z

[00:00.556][Ari Melber] [00:00.821]Now to our special report. [00:02.150]Around the world, many nations face corruption. [00:04.542]In the U.S., police often tell themselves a story about America being exceptional or superior to other nations [00:12.774]when the facts show there is American corruption in voting rights, criminal justice, housing policy. [00:18.614]A political system that faces legal corruption with some of the most expensive campaigns in the world and many critiques of U.S. foreign policy, [00:26.514]which brings us to this 1996 exchange, [00:30.766]between Lewis Farrakhan and CBS'S Mike Wallace [00:33.162] [00:33.428][Mike Wallace & Lewis Farrakhan] [00:35.555]You got to Nigeria, which is, if not the most corrupt nation in Africa [00:41.922]—and it is—it could be the most corrupt nation in the world [00:45.912]35 years old. [00:47.772]That's what that nation is. [00:49.889]Now, here's America, 226 years old. [00:53.345]30 years ago, black folk got the right to vote. [00:56.535]You're not in any moral position to tell anybody how corrupt they are. [01:00.789]You should be quiet. [01:02.372]When you have spilled the blood of human beings— [01:05.297]has Nigeria dropped an atomic bomb and killed people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? [01:11.946]Have they killed off millions of native Americans? [01:15.127]How dare you put yourself in that position as a moral judge? [01:19.648]I think you should keep quiet [01:21.509]Can you think of one more corrupt? [01:22.827]Yeah, I'm living in one. I'm living in one. I didn't mean to be so fired up [01:27.874]No, no, that's good [01:28.938]That's my passion [01:30.005] [01:30.271][Ari Melber] [01:32.930]Farrakhan was not correct about everything in his career, [01:35.842]but those points resonated with many, [01:38.234]as he dispatched the contradiction between America's reality and perhaps her selective vision of herself. [01:45.945]Corruption just refers to fraudulent conduct by the powerful, [01:50.986]which is pervasive across American history, [01:53.113]and especially in the long war on drugs. [01:57.358]So remember that exchange—we will come back to it. [01:59.748]Tonight in this report, about the failed and the often racist war on drugs, [02:04.267]which started so long ago, that we've covered this story many ways. [02:09.053]Tonight, we're going to look at it through the life and poetry of an American who lived it, and lived to tell about it. [02:17.019]And he sure is telling. [02:19.413]It's an American dream story and you may know some of it. [02:23.392]But you don't know all of it, especially since the story's not over. [02:27.111]And a new instalment just came out heading into this weekend, [02:30.036]as Jay-Z uses an unusually long four minutes of straight poetry to tackle the drug war, business, discrimination, and perseverance. [02:40.660]The poetry is spoken over a beat in a song with other artists. [02:45.169]And I think you will see why it's poetry as we go through it now. [02:48.358]Jay, also known at Hov, marvelling how he went from poverty to a billion and touting, [02:52.881]how those others basically came from his same space or crib. [02:56.060]Kanye, who worked with him as a producer and collaborator. [02:58.718]Rihanna, who Jay signed early on, and LeBron, who's linked to Jay's Roc Nation company. [03:05.884]So Jay's reference there to, "technically", is both the caveat, [03:09.341]LeBron's done plenty on his own, and a double entendre for technical fouls in basketball. [03:15.456]Jay opens there by asking forgiveness for making his first dollars off drugs, cooked on a stove, and notes he left that. [03:24.949]Drug or dope game with his record clean, turning the cocaine into champagne. [03:32.395]And that's a nod to his ability to evade charges. [03:35.850]A clean record gave him the lane to go from street coke, to the good life of the champagne. [03:41.155]It's also a play on how he makes money off records, [03:43.818]his albums are now clean records since he left the street life, [03:47.526]while the alchemy of turning illegal coke into legal bubbly sounds like a turn on Jesus turning water to wine, [03:57.630]and it is, because soon after, Jay completes the parallel [04:01.075] [04:01.341][Jay-Z] [04:02.937]Jesus turned water to wine, for Hov, it just took a stove [04:06.127] [04:06.658][Ari Melber] [04:07.456]But think about it. [04:08.785]There's nothing automatically legitimate about wine or champagne. [04:12.231]It was criminally punished during prohibition, [04:15.952]a policy that ultimately fueled gangs and violence and was the only constitutional amendment ever to be reversed [04:22.665]because both parties determined that prohibition was a messy failure, [04:28.515]so politicians turned the alcohol back to a legitimate business, [04:32.494]a slippery spectrum, which Jay notes a few lines later in this poem saying, [04:38.076]"Breezy what the business is, we pushin’ Fenty like Fentanyl, [04:41.796]the 'ish is all legitimate, E was down ten for this". [04:46.041]And those lines quickly go from prohibition to a war on street drugs, [04:49.764]associated with minorities, as mentioned earlier in this broadcast, to Fentanyl, [04:55.344]a huge driver of drug problems and deaths, which politicians do not treat criminally, [05:00.387]the same way they attacked the drugs that Jay or others once sold. [05:05.707]I can tell you corporations have made over 10 billion dollars selling addictive painkillers—legally. [05:13.405]So that's a contrast. [05:15.264]Jay also invokes the fellow billionaire Rihanna, citing her Fenty fashion line, [05:20.039]noting everything they produce now, that they deal, if you will, is legitimate. [05:25.090]And that other line I mentioned refers to "E," Emory Jones, [05:29.602]his an associate who served roughly ten years with a drug sentence and now works at Jay's company. [05:33.854]And look, many listeners may not know his name, [05:36.778]but the story is something so many communities know. [05:41.031]It illustrates how hundreds of thousands of others are locked up for nonviolent drug offences. [05:46.338]The data shows the drug war is discriminatory, [05:49.001]that entire categories of drugs can be arbitrarily banned, or allowed, [05:54.304]often depending on who is really using them. [05:56.962]That ranges from prohibition like I mentioned to the opioid abuse, [06:00.422]which does not involve the same sentences dealt to Black and Brown Americans. [06:05.461]Or marijuana, long classified as the most severe federal level, schedule one. [06:10.245]But now, bet you've heard about this, marijuana has been shifted by politicians and voters, to legal, [06:17.876]in 19 states and counting. [06:20.524]But the warehousing of so many people for drugs that are now, [06:25.047]right now illegal all over the nation, well, as a policy matter, it's absurd. [06:31.681]Even before you get to race, it's also been documented as racist. [06:36.469]Now, Jay did evade indictment for dealing illegal drugs. [06:40.720]Now he gets paid for selling legal ones. [06:43.099]He founded the upscale 'Monogram' marijuana company, [06:45.763]which is a play on the traditional term, 'monogram', [06:48.685]a reference to selling a gram, and this poem marvels about living on both sides of the law in one lifetime, [06:56.385]as this law around the country has been changing. [07:01.170]I want you listen here as Jay conjures the image of a monogram joint in his pocket, [07:07.007]while actual monograms are often embroidered on the breast pocket. [07:10.997]Jay invokes being a writer. [07:12.593]He's careful with his sentences, or bars as lyrics are called, [07:16.304]because he lives now the legitimate life. [07:19.228]Writing sentences, not jail sentences. [07:22.153]Rap bars, not jail bars. [07:25.343]And those jail bars come from The Jacksonian Laws, [07:27.991]so he'll clash with those who make the laws he says—as he calls that clash with the plain term, [07:33.842]'smoke', which is also a play on the smoke he now sells legally. [07:38.094]It's deep. This is the kind of elevated prism for these issues. [07:43.401]I can tell you we've interviewed many lawmakers who don't come close to this level of nuance about drug policy and its arbitrary and pernicious results. [07:52.084]The same song then briefly explores how pain fuels growth [07:55.012] [07:55.279][Jay-Z] [07:57.404]All this pain from the outside, inspired all this growth within [08:00.860]So new planes gettin' broken in [08:03.243]Highest elevation of the self [08:05.102]They done — around and gave the right — wealth [08:08.558] [08:09.289][Ari Melber] [08:09.553]Now, those new planes could be just private jets. [08:14.595]As Jay notes you would need to right people to buy them, [08:18.847]the right brothers with enough wealth, or a double entendre there apparently, [08:22.825]to The Wright Brothers who invented plane travel. [08:25.752]The same line cites another Jay business, [08:27.611]the 'Paper Planes' brand, which tees off a sorta' childhood imagination when you fold a paper plane. [08:34.780]Now, am I reaching? [08:36.905]Well, art is always up for interpretation, [08:38.770]but I can tell Jay's long time producer, [08:40.892]Young Guru, decodes this part of a verse in a new video that was just posted online [08:45.415] [08:45.679][Young Guru] [08:46.998]You got to realize that everything being said in here is [08:48.859]A fact, bruh, it's not aspirational no more. [08:51.515]New planes getting broken in. [08:55.163]It's like literally paper planes, the brand, so new clothes, [08:59.674]like when you try on new clothes you're breaking in new clothes them. [09:01.801]Man just ordered a new plane. [09:04.197]But then it's new planes getting broken in, new levels of existence [09:07.641] [09:07.905][Ari Melber] [09:10.031]All right, so if you're counting, that's airplanes, [09:12.157]the planes company, [09:12.959]'Paper Planes', [09:14.018]and planes of existence. [09:16.416]Quadruple entendre. [09:19.071]This poetry like other great art, [09:22.707]takes more time to fully understand than it takes to just see or hear on a first glance. [09:28.545]That is why many people say Jay remains the greatest of all time, known by the acronym, G.O.A.T., [09:34.659]and by at the end of this dense poetic verse, [09:37.044]which just dropped on Friday, [09:39.433]Jay admonishes his—would be judges or competitors—as donkeys, a play on G.O.A.T., [09:44.219]but then makes a reference that takes us all the way back to where we began [09:50.058] [09:50.324][Jay-Z] [09:52.185]Next time we have a discussion who the G.O.A.T., you donkeys know this [09:54.844]Forgive me, that's my passion talkin' (Haha) [09:58.303]Sometimes I feel like Farrakhan (Haha) talkin' to Mike Wallace (Haha) [10:02.016]I think y'all should keep quiet [10:03.074] [10:03.606][Ari Melber] [10:05.203]That's his passion talking. [10:07.066]Jay invoking that classic moment we showed you to offset his own grandiose talk. [10:12.370]Asking forgiveness for being so strident, [10:15.298]even as he meant every word. [10:17.955]But notice what else he's doing, [10:19.549]ending this poem just as he began it when he asked forgiveness for dealing drugs in his youth. [10:25.388]And notice what else he's doing, [10:27.779]a Farrakhan parallel can apply just to proclaiming himself the greatest, [10:31.506]that would like, I think, a little [?], [10:34.683]or maybe it can apply all the way back to this entire poem about America's drug war and Jay's own path. [10:42.127]Think about it—decades in, this billionaire entrepreneur with proven success, [10:48.495]measurable success in music, media, sports, business, law, and politics, [10:52.751]still finds he must explain basic facts about American corruption and racism to elite and White society, [11:01.782]and many leaders and people still don't see it, or refuse to face it. [11:09.214]That kind of entitled ignorance, [11:11.338]which can cause real damage to real people's lives, well, that might raise your ire. [11:18.251]It might get your passion talking. [11:21.167]And if the facts are talking, well, it's a good time for people to listen. [11:26.749]And then listen again, and make sure you got the point.