Categories: ArticlesJay Z

Jay-Z VS Billboard: Who Will Win The Real Holy Grail Explained

For me, Hip-Hop was a secret pleasure. Growing up in a Christian-like house hold It was frowned upon due to the 90’s negative stigma surrounding Rap and Hip-Hop. I was born and raised in ‘the hood’, Newark, New Jersey and the drug dealing, baggy pants, cursing, and defamation of women, was not something my mother or my father was allowing their children to be apart of. Hip-Hop and Rap music catered to those ideals and my parents did a good job keeping me, and my siblings from that lifestyle, starting with the kind of music we listened to.

Fortunately, they didn’t have much of a choice. The Hip-Hop culture spread so wide that it became apart of everyones lives weather they had a Hip-Hop CD or not. Eventually, through proper parenting and the simple understanding for the love of music, my parents, mainly my mother, let me play a little bit of Hip-Hop ever so often. By the time I was old enough to play what I want, I was so trained to listen to R&B, Soul, Pop, Neo-Soul and a little Gospel that there was little to no room for Hip-Hop. I loved my taste in music, and I let the world know through entertainment, but I was a secret Hip-Hop lover, and Jay Z has always been one of the main Hip-Hop artist I would enjoy listening to.

“Rap critics that say he’s ‘Money Cash Hoes’
I’m from the hood stupid what type of facts are those
If you grew up with holes in your zapatos
You’d celebrate the minute you was having dough…” -99 Problems Jay-Z

Although I’ve never bought a Hip-Hop/Rap album before (I don’t really buy albums of any kind) I am very intrigued by this new album Jay-Z has coming out.

Samsung and Jay-Z partnered up for his upcoming release “Magna Carta Holy Grail” and there has been a major buzz on the internet. His promo video for the album went viral and has accumulated over 13million views on Youtube in a matter of days. Unfortunately the buzz is not all great. Billboard is not allowing Jay-Z’s sales from the deal with Samsung to be counted as album sales for Billboard. A letter from Billboards editor, Bill Werde, states;

“…Retailers doing one-way deals is a fact of life in the music business. When Best Buy committed to and paid upfront for 600,000 copies of Guns N’ Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” in 2008, those albums didn’t count as sales — not until music fans actually bought them. Had Jay-Z and Samsung charged $3.49 — our minimum pricing threshold for a new release to count on our charts — for either the app or the album, the U.S. sales would have registered. And ultimately, that’s the rub: The ever-visionary Jay-Z pulled the nifty coup of getting paid as if he had a platinum album before one fan bought a single copy. (He may have done even better than that — artists generally get paid a royalty percentage of wholesale. If Jay keeps every penny of Samsung’s $5 purchase price, he’d be more than doubling the typical superstar rate.) But in the context of this promotion, nothing is actually for sale….”

I pose these questions to get your noodle going…Is this fair? Is this yet another attempt to keep Brown Greatness from reaching highs no one has ever reached before? Or is this simply the most politically correct way of handling a situation like this?!

The B.L.A.C.K Media feels this is not a fair descision. Considering pre-sale, the internet, and how the world of music is ran now-a-days there should be some changes made effective immediately when considering album sales. It’s no secret that consumers buying albums is soon to be something of the past, so why not create change for the future? Jay-Z has always been known for blazing his own trail and this was another way to force the hand of reality. Reality is, musicians must find a better way to sale their music, and partnering up with different venues having them purchase music so that you have what you need to keep your lights on (Not saying Jay-Z has this problem, but securing this for women and men after him in music) but still getting your music out to the public and being present on the Billboard charts in a proper way is not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. It works! Even though, Billboards reasoning is preceded by it’s years in service to musicians, there is room for improvement when it comes to how people buy and sale albums, CD’s, and singles.

In the end Jay-Z’s new album will do very well on the charts and in sales. This minor set back is only a major way for more promotion which ultimately helps Jay-Z. So, when considering WHO WILL WIN? Jay-Z wins victoriously. Many are already predicting first week album sales to be 500,000 or more not to mention he has started the conversation about what needs to be changed in this world of music entertainment.