Jay-Z is weighing in on a long-held debate between die-hard fans and aspiring moguls.
The Grammy-winning rapper has long transcended the genre and, after becoming hip-hop’s first billionaire, spawned a standing hypothetical question on social media: Would you rather get a one-on-one dinner with Jay for his financial advice — or $500,000 in cash?
“You gotta take the money,” he told Gayle King in a “CBS Mornings” interview airing later this week. “I mean, what am I gonna say? Everything that I’m gonna say — you got all that in the music, what, for $10.99? That’s a bad deal. I wouldn’t tell you to cut a bad deal.”
Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, said people should “take the $500,000” and “go buy some albums” of his. The rapper argued any wisdom he might impart at a dinner is “all there” if people just “piece it together” and “really listen to the music for the words.”
He notably referred to one of his most popular albums, “The Blueprint,” in expounding.
“Everything that I said was going to happen happened,” he told King about chronicling his career through music. “Everything that I said I wanted to do, I’ve done. And there’s ‘The Blueprint’ — the blueprint, literally — to me and my life and my journey is there already.”
The rap legend has been a staple of “top five rappers” lists for dedicated hip-hop heads for decades. The reasons aren’t just relegated to flow, production and storytelling skills, but to the financial advice and other wisdom the business mogul has seeded his discography with.
His mythos on wax have long been that of a street hustler who managed to go straight.
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The Brooklyn native famously used his street corner wisdom to build a legitimate empire. He founded Roc-A-Fella Records in 1994, Rocawear clothing in 1999, became co-owner of music streaming platform Tidal in 2015, partnered with the NFL in 2019 — and indeed went from rags to riches.
“I guess the debate is over now. You gotta take the 500k instead of the Dinner with Jay Z,” wrote one user on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, with another posting: “Watch folks still try to argue that dinner with JAY Z is still the right answer.”
“Jay obviously thinks you’re crazy if you pick dinner with him over the money,” wrote a third person on X, with another posting: “May this stupid discussion about dinner with Jay Z or 500,000 be forever laid to rest. Jay Z himself is saying, ‘TAKE THE MONEY.’”
While countless social media users are taking their victory lap in this debate, rapper Rick Ross reportedly said Monday in an Instagram story that he would choose the dinner — as he had an invaluable lunch with Jay in 2008 that turned him into a better lyricist.
For those without platinum records or Grammy nominations, however, $500,000 remains the more popular choice. Jay himself has long espoused the virtues of financial literacy and even teamed up with Warren Buffet in 2011 for an animated series to promote it.
The full “CBS Mornings” interview with Jay-Z airs in two parts Thursday and Friday.