Perhaps the most concise and perplexing statement of Carter’s new unambiguous love for capitalism comes in a couplet on the second track, “The Story of O.J.,” a song whose main theme is the indelible force of racism against black people regardless of class. Carter is not at the height of his lyrical prowess on 4:44, but the album is ambitious and emotionally vulnerable, and represents a profound shift from Jay-Z’s previous offerings, especially in its belief in the power of the market to improve black lives rather than destroy them. He offers a new vision of capitalism as a tool for community uplift. Appropriately enough, 4:44 begins with the metaphorical assassination of the Jay-Z persona as Carter takes on the responsibilities of fatherhood, marriage, and wealth. The tension between Jay-Z’s love of the game and his fear of losing his soul, his indulgence in worldly pleasures as the years ripped away friends and family through death or betrayal, formed the emotional core of every Jay-Z album from Reasonable Doubt to The Blueprint 3. He gives his mother space on the album to speak about the years she spent hiding her sexual orientation. He imagines himself on the other end of the knife he used to stab the director Lance “Un” Rivera in 1999. On Reasonable Doubt, Jay-Z’s ideal relationship was one in which fidelity was optional on 4:44, Carter raps movingly about the devastating realization that someday, his children will learn of his transgressions. The contradiction of that transition is that while Shawn Corey Carter’s politics have simplified in disappointing ways, that’s come with an emotional maturity Jay-Z never had. The Joyful Pandering of Spider-Man: No Way Home David Sims Perhaps the one thing he didn’t expect was that it would have a happy ending, one with wealth and family, fame and fatherhood. ![]() He saw clearly that his pursuit of success visited countless cruelties and indignities upon himself and those around him, and that his triumph would come at unimaginable cost. Jay-Z used the terms of finance to describe the drug trade-referring to his crew as his “staff,” his organization as his “conglomerate,” smoothly transitioning from acknowledging the violence of the trade to comparing it to the stock market (“drug prices up and down like it’s Wall Street homes, but this is worse than the Dow Jones, your brains are now blown”), and connecting the inequality of the system that shaped his life with his determination to triumph over it. Jay-Z argued that there was something revolutionary in this, in a black man born in the projects proving himself a better entrepreneur than white men born into plenty, as if to suggest the infinite human potential destroyed by the circumstances he escaped. Until 4:44, Jay-Z’s albums could be understood as an indictment of the immorality of capitalism by a man luxuriating in its fruits.
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