Jay Z:'I knew about budgets, I was a drug dealer"

exaggerated? taking 1 hit on a cigarette or drinking a glass of alcohol isn't addicting.Crack is 100% addictive,and it does more damage to your health than cigs and liquor.

Yet liquor kills more people than crack by leaps and bounds. So which is the real problem?
 
Yet liquor kills more people than crack by leaps and bounds. So which is the real problem?

Alcohol consumed in moderation,responsibly won't harm you. There is no responsible way to smoke crack and you damn sure won't be taking it in moderation if you try it :smt043
 
I will admit to being a fan in the past but since the Cuba thing I no longer consider myself a fan. Can't support anyone who spends money in a repressive regime like Cuba. I don't see how he's any different than the others. All made money in various ventures and I consider them all evil even Jay-z I just don't get the singling out. Makes no sense to me, he's part of the oppressive oligarchy now no better but definitely no worst than these other people.
I really don't love rap so much, not to the point where I ignore obvious information and slants but I do have to be honest when I think about these things. Does rap contain provocative and destructive lyrics? Yeah it has and still does but so do a lot of tv shows and movies yet rap carries the entire burden of shaping young black minds.
What is it about us as a culture that listens to a 50 cent cd and wants to emulate that as you say yet no white kids are trying to emulate negative things from entertainment with people who look like them. Is it possible it has far less to do with the music and a lot more to do with the circumstances of that particular area?
Blacks are not the only ones who emphasize education less its an American culture thing. We have become completely anti intellectual and even it were just us, what do you propose to change that?

Man, you really love to take the 'but other people do it' approach to things. White people DO emulate negative things from entertainment with people who look like them. There have been kids who have gone out and tried to emulate Grand Theft Auto. There is the man who killed his family while reciting Eminem lyrics. There was a kid who killed his brother trying to emulate Dexter. You even have white kids from affluent neighborhoods who ... and I hate this term ... act black, trying to emulate what they pick up from 'black culture'. Don't get me wrong man, I KNOW that music isn't the reason for the circumstances. The music was born out of the circumstances.

Danny Brown said:
We living in the streets where the options is limited / because it's burnt buildings instead of jobs and businesses

Really man, my issue with the music is that it takes the lowest of the low and it glorifies the fuck out of it. The message is majorly anti-progressive, it's counter to everything that blacks should aspire to. I'm not even saying all rap has to be conscious, just we are flooded with bullshit right now. To take two rappers that you've probably never heard of from my own city, we need less Lil Mouse and more Chance the Rapper.


And again.,.

Blacks are not the only ones who emphasize education less

You live and die by that other people do it approach. So, you're kinda right... kinda. When compared to other countries, the American education system leaves much to be desired. However, within America there is a wide racial achievement gap between whites and Asians in comparison to blacks and hispanics. Within the context of this country, there is no way that you can tell me that all those white people who we see running wall street put as little value on education as a culture as we do. How do I propose that we change it? Same thing that I mentioned in the gun violence thread just Yesterday. Mentality shift, cultural realignment. It's a change that needs to happen from the inside. Like you said, our circumstances have a lot to do with it so lets improve our circumstances. Or are we waiting for white America to do that for us? Cause that will never happen. Even if they did try, with the current mentality that a lot of us have we'd be resistant to it.
 
You're like a educated and articulate me. 100 percent love this shit.

I will say this I am still a small bit a rap fan but I will gladly do without it as it is brain washing our youth

I'll add, I actually do listen to rap alllll the time. It's my guilty pleasure. I don't even want to see it go away, I also don't think all rap has to become 'socially conscious', just some of it is really fucking vile.
 
I'll add, I actually do listen to rap alllll the time. It's my guilty pleasure. I don't even want to see it go away, I also don't think all rap has to become 'socially conscious', just some of it is really fucking vile.

This we agree on
 
Not really a surprise, isn't it.. At least he is honest. The only way to get out of poverty and to finance your legal ideas is an illegal way. Sad, but realisticquote]


This is so far from true, but it's a nice urban myth spread by the hiphop industry.
To be honest... I have no idea about hip hop industry or any myth.. it's just what I've seen and experienced.. I know lawyers that are ruthless crooks, because they know, how to do it. Businessmen with a "clean slate" in public, but have there hands in illegal businesses I don't want to explain any further and Ministers that are involved in prostitution, drug businesses... the world and the people are not "White or Black", most of them are in a Grey Zone. The only difference is, who gets caught to tell the public, how sorry he is...but when you talk to them behind closed doors, they will tell you, how stupid the people are and that they deserve to suffer..



:smt023:smt023

To add a little more, usually its the illegal activities that show people how to do things the legal way.
True, some learn, others don't

I can tell you first hand, this is dangerously not true.

I don't know, whether the Banks in US are more tolerant than in Europe. But if you have nothing, except your genious idea or brain..no one will support you, no bank and no Investor.
One thing is true, drug dealers are a special species, their bite is extra tough
 
I'll add, I actually do listen to rap alllll the time. It's my guilty pleasure. I don't even want to see it go away, I also don't think all rap has to become 'socially conscious', just some of it is really fucking vile.

Nothing wrong with 'ignant' rap. I listen to waka,chief keef,trap,club music etc... the problem is there's no balance between that and rap with substance. All the outlets (radio,tv,internet) push the same shit 24/7.
 
Nothing wrong with 'ignant' rap. I listen to waka,chief keef,trap,club music etc... the problem is there's no balance between that and rap with substance. All the outlets (radio,tv,internet) push the same shit 24/7.

Well then that's on the public not the rappers. They wouldn't promote it unless people wanted it.
 
Yet liquor kills more people than crack by leaps and bounds. So which is the real problem?
come on man, one is legal and one is not. There is an obstruction to one. If anything your alcohol example is proof that if you made crack legal it would be at least as damaging as alcohol.
 
come on man, one is legal and one is not. There is an obstruction to one. If anything your alcohol example is proof that if you made crack legal it would be at least as damaging as alcohol.

What does legal and illegal have to do with anything? Weed is illegal and does far less harm.
 
What does legal and illegal have to do with anything? Weed is illegal and does far less harm.
It has to do with access.

I can drive over to walmart and buy alcohol.
Can you drive to walmart and by crack from walmart?

You are comparing something that is easily accessible to something that is not. Because alcohol is easily accessible due to it being legal, it causes more issues over crack which is not as easy to access due to being illegal.
 
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Odd that he's rehashing his drug-dealing, though it's a first admission of his past sins to admit that he contributed to the deaths of many...wonder if he donates to drug rehab programs...


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Hip hop mogul Jay Z, one of the richest men in the music industry, has admitted he got his business skills from drug dealing.

He said selling crack cocaine on the streets of New York during the 1980s gave him the skills to succeed later in life.

'I know about budgets. I was a drug dealer,' said the 43 year old who is married to singer Beyonce. To be in a drug deal, you need to know what you can spend, what you need to re-up.'

Jay Z has never hidden his past as a drug dealer before he found fame and fortune as a music producer.

He told Vanity Fair magazine he was part of the crack cocaine epidemic that blighted the streets of New York and was responsible for hundreds of deaths.

Jay Z said he now regrets being part of the drug problem but said at the time he was only thinking about the money.

'Not until later, when I realized the effects on the community,' he said. 'I started looking at the community on the whole, but in the beginning no.

'I was thinking about surviving. I was thinking about improving my situation. I was thinking about buying clothes.'


Jay Z told the October issue of the magazine that the most important plan a drug dealer can have is to get out of the business.

'You have to have an exit strategy, because your window(for dealing drugs) is very small. You're going to get locked up or you're going to die.'

On a happier note, Jay revealed his 18-month-old daughter, Blue Ivy, has become his biggest cheerleader after hearing his latest album Magna Carta... Holy Grail.

'She loves all the songs. She plays a song and she goes, "More, Daddy, more... Daddy song." She’s my biggest fan,' he said. 'If no one bought the Magna Carta [album], the fact that she loves it so much, it gives me the greatest joy.

'And that’s not like a cliché. I’m really serious. She’s genuine, she’s honest, because she doesn’t know it makes me happy. She just wants to hear it.'

In 2008 he married Beyonce and the couple are the richest couple in the music business with an estimated fortune of more than $750million between them.

Admitting 'of course' he pursued Beyonce, Jay maintains he would have charmed her even if he had been working a 'normal job' and not been a famous hip hop star.

'If I’m as cool as I am, yes. But she’s a charming Southern girl, you know, she’s not impressed... But I would have definitely had to be this cool.'

He also confirms that the line on his latest album: 'She was a good girl ’til she knew me' is about his wife.

When quizzed if she is no longer a 'good girl', Jay-Z responds: 'Nah. She’s gangsta now.'

kudos to Mr. Carter for his music career success and segueing into various mainstream investment endeavors.

The only quibble I would have-- and in fairness, it's not with him exclusively-- is the mythologizing of these guys "drug/crime" pasts (some of this is done by fans, some by the artists themselves, some abetted by the journalists who cover them).

To explain-- if you just accept what the grapevine has to say (or some of these artists' own interviews where they give hints and play coy) they'd have you believing that these folks were the biggest 'drug dealers' in their respective cities before they got their record deals. None of these (gangsta-)rappers had it going on like that back in the days. None of them. Were some of them "hustling" on the block? Yeah. But so were thousands of inner-city teens and young adults back in the 80s and 90s. The crack formula basically democratized cocaine trafficking, to the point where "anybody" could get involved if they could buy an eighth of a kilogram (which may have already been pre-cut with whatever else).
So this notion that your typical "ex-drug dealer turned rapper" allegedly turned away from some multi-million dollar "drug empire" before chucking it all to be a rap singer is ridiculous. Snoop Dogg wasn't remotely any kind of high-ranking Crip along the lines of Tookie Williams, before he hooked up with Dr. Dre. Not a single rapper alive or dead was in any way "Mob affiliated" at all. I know too much about American history to accept any talk along those lines.
 
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Sorry the dude sold Crack. Crack cocaine is probably one of the most destructive drugs of all time. If he just sold marijuana or even hallucinogenic drugs I would have some level of respect for him. These are less dangerous, and non addictive. He literally got people hooked on a dangerous addictive substance, and then went on to glorify it with his "music career."


He basically bragged about how he fucked people over to get to his position. Honestly its quite clear the road to fortune, and success is being a sociopath. As well as screwing people over without regard.
 
What does legal and illegal have to do with anything? Weed is illegal and does far less harm.

20 states have legalized the use of medical marijuana...2 states have legalized it for recreational use...I happen to live in one of the 2...pot shops popping up all over the city like starbucks...

This also means that the state is no longer prosecuting possession, distribution or use cases when it comes to mary jane ...in fact, they will be releasing people from our prisons and jails that are incarcerated on petty drug crime:weedman:
 
I have had this argument before with a guy who believes that the drug dealer is not a criminal but a businessman and is trying to make money from the people who want the drugs. I argued that a drug dealer is selling a product that can and will kill a person from frequent use. I have a neighbor who smokes marijuana because he not only feels good, he can see thing better with his eyes and mind. I even stated that the person who manufactures the drug is dangerous because that person knows what is in it. It is no surprise to me. When I saw the film American Gangster, Frank Lucas's business sense and sense of honor, was a sound one and it made him successful. However, it was his product that ruined and took the lives of many who used it. If Lucas was not in the drug business, and into something else, using his business sense, honor and smarts, who knows. Ice-T was a pimp and a drug dealer before he became a rapper and actor. When he got the role of detective Boudofin Tutuola on Law And Order:SVU, he was very thankful for that, even though he was in many films before that. If one can learn from a mistake and turn it around to make a success, I would not hold his past against him. That was then, this is now.
 
Are we really scapegoating dude for the crack epidemic lol?

Pretty much. Our entire system is based on exploitation. People get rich off of making people's lives worst far more than they do by making it better and singling out one individual doesn't do anything to stop it.
People who condemn the drugs and the negative culture be better parents and mentors to show the youth there's a better way if you believe so but condemning Jay-z for being what we all know to be the way most become that successful is ridiculous.
 
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