What We're Hearing

In his review of a different chapter of Jay 2 tha Z's ongoing autobiographical/autoentrepreneurial project, the dean makes the following persuasive observation:

Sean Carter isn't the first crime-linked hitmaker with a penchant for kicking broads out of bed at 6:15 in the morning. Frank Sinatra beat him to it. Right, Sinatra never boasted about his own callousness--not publicly, in song--and that's a big difference. Jay-Z has too many units tied up in playing the now-a-rapper-now-a-thug "reality" game with his customers, thugs and fantasists both, and only when he lets the token Amil talk back for a verse does he make room for female reality.

The connect b/t the business, man and the chairman of the board is an obvious one, but merits mentioning nevertheless. A different member of the VV diaspora (the best faculty a music and movie loving boy could want in the 80s), Gary Giddins might take it further. He'd draw the line b/t Sinatra and Der Bingle, Der Bingle and the minstrel circuit, the tricky bidness of makeup and voice. He might take us then to Bert Williams, one of the true kings of the 20th c. That would then give us a route back to really understand the business, man.

Get it: We are at the crossroads again. And we're on our knees.

Take this and put it in context:

• "D'Evils," Jay-Z (1996).