Jay Z and Beyonce at a Nets gameA New York Times story this week about the business acumen of Shawn Carter, aka Jay-Z, has sent a splash, or at least a ripple, through the blogosphere. The article talks about Carter’s investment and wide-ranging input into the birth of the Brooklyn Nets and their brand spanking new (and yet rust-colored) arena at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush.
104 comments on the NYT site so far, and many, many followup blogs. Let’s take a dive:
Here is a defense of Jay-Z:
I wonder how many people who wrote scathing critiques of Jay-Z in the comments are sitting in their cushy Upper East Side apartments, born into privileged worlds void of the violence and deep poverty that many people in their same city must climb out of. If they had any contact with this world, they would be less judgmental of a man who dodged many of these hurdles, and while delving into some criminal activities as a young man, managed to make it out ALIVE (which many of us never do). To that end, he then figured out how to create a legal business empire now worth almost $500 million dollars. It’s shameful that some of you are too short sighted to even think about what it’s like for people who come from these neighborhoods. But I suppose you might be the same folks who don’t bat a lash at the criminals who work at the financial firms who crashed our economy. Jay-Z is the boogie man, but Lloyd Blankfein is a model citizen we should look up to.