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Jay Z, photographed backstage at the adidas Originals x Kanye West “YEEZY SEASON 1″ fashion show at Skylight Clarkson Square in West SoHo on February 11, 2015.

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“On the jewels I blew more money than Latrell, who else?”

Jay-Z, photographed while performing at KMEL 106’s “All-Star Summer Jam” festival in San Francisco on August 12, 2000. He headlined the sold-out show, performing alongside Lil’ Kim, Da Brat, Nelly and the St. Lunatics, Master P, Kurupt, Carl Thomas, Next, Lil’ Bow Wow and the supergroup Lucy Pearl. Beanie Siegel was on hand to act as hype man, and he also performed a few of his current singles. Jigga finished his set with his Summer anthem “Big Pimpin’.”

Hov is wearing Latrell Sprewell’s Golden State Warriors #15 jersey, which was most likely sourced for him by Reuben “Big Rube” Harley—the West Philadelphia hustler and jersey king who helped the Mitchell & Ness bring the throwback trend to the mainstream, in return for $500-a-month and one of each jersey they made. Under his guidance Mitchell & Ness sales skyrocketed from $2.2 million in 1999 to $36 million by 2003. In a Big Rube feature in Vibe magazine in May 2003, author Erik Parker wrote that it was Jay-Z who “popularized the expression ‘throwback’ to encompass old-school athletic wear.” Their relationship wasn’t all roses though—Hov once tossed Big Rube out of a video shoot when he found out he had sold Bow Wow a 1984 white snap-front Chicago Bulls warm-up top before offering it to him.

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“It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up! magazine…”

Jay-Z, photographed for a feature in Word Up! magazine by Anthony Cutajar in 1998. The feature was produced in support of his sophomore studio album In My Lifetime, Vol. 1.

In the corresponding interview with writer Asondra Hunter, Hov spoke candidly on his ill-fated dealings with Payday Records: “They eventually signed me to a deal, but were acting shady the whole time, like they didn’t know how to work a record or something. The things that they were setting up for me I could have done myself. They had me traveling places to do instores, and my product wasn’t even available in the store! We shot one video, but when the time came for me to do the video for the second single, I had to be cut out. They gave me the money and I started my own company. There was a little arguing back and forth, but our conflict finally got resolved. The bottom line was they wasn’t doing their job, so I had to get out of there.”

Jay and Dame Dash began selling the Ski Beatz-produced “In My Lifetime” single out of their trunk in 1993. The rapper’s cousin Briant “Bee-High” Biggs was in charge of making up promotional gift baskets for radio stations, filling them with Cristal, high-end Cuban cigars, and the 12-inch single. With legends such as DJ Premier giving the single major airtime on his WBLS show, it soon caught the attention of Payday Records founder Patrick Moxey. According to Combat Jack, Jaÿ signed a single deal with the New York indie label for between $25,000 and $30,000.

As explained in the above quote, their relationship soon soured when he felt that the label was mismanaging the marketing of his singles. While the experience wasn’t commercially or personally successful, their time with Payday did teach the Roc-A-Fella Records co-founders invaluable lessons about the independent label game. 

Using some of the contract buyout money, the Roc family rented a small office space at 17 John Street in Lower Manhattan and officially launched the label. They soon found a pressing and distribution partner in Priority Records, who didn’t offer them a “nigga deal” (”they make you feel like you own the label, but you don’t”) like the others. The two companies split the business costs, and had a 70/30 split on distribution profits. “We didn’t need dirty money to start Roc-A-Fella, because we had Payday’s money. At a certain point if you ain’t living right, you want to do things legally. You want to leave your past behind and start looking for the future,” Jigga told Hunter during their time together. “And just so you know, I didn’t want to ask Priority for shit. They would have kicked in some money for overhead expenses, but I wanted to do this on my own so the profit was mine, free and clear. I knew I was going to be successful and the equity would be worth something down the line.“

The rest of the Payday buyout money, as well as the initial $16,000 investment from their newest partner Kareem “Biggs” Burke, went towards filming the video for “In My Lifetime” in St. Thomas in 1995.

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JAY-Z, photographed closing day one of “The Meadows” festival at the Citi Field in Queens by Ray Rodriguez on September 15, 2017.

Hov had a simplistic festival tour set-up during his four festival bookings in 2017, with an original giant inflatable “Balloon Dog” sculpture by Jeff Koons taking pride of place. “Jeff worked with Jay-Z and his team in creating the 40-foot-tall inflatable ‘Balloon Dog’ piece for Jay-Z’s festival dates,” a representative for Koons told artnet News at the time. “Jeff has always been a fan.”

The stage design’s minimalist aesthetic continues the theme of 4:44, which of course featured only the album title and the phrase “THIS IS HIS 13TH STUDIO ALBUM” on a shade of matte orange creamsicle. Fittingly, orange is the color of the sculpture that cemented Koons’ art world glory: in 2013 his work “Balloon Dog (Orange)” sold for $58.4 million at auction, setting a record for commanding the highest price for work by a living artist.

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JAY-Z, Tiffany Haddish, Danai Gurira, Marcus Henderson, Winston Duke, and Lupita Nyong’o, photographed at the rap mogul’s “Gold Party” after the Oscars on Sunday evening. Hov is wearing a Tom Ford “Shelton” cocktail jacket ($3,590) with TF dress pants and shoes.

The event was held in the underground garage of the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, which Hov’s team had transformed into a classic Hollywood-themed casino and lounge. No I.D. went back to his DJ roots and provided the evening’s soundtrack, with the guests dancing the night away while enjoying bottomless glasses of Hov’s Armand de Brignac champagne. 

The exclusive, 150-people guest list included the evening’s guest of honor Mary J. Blige, the Roc family, Kareem “Biggs” Burke, Elon Musk, Diddy, Naomi Campbell, Nicki Minaj, Drake, Shonda Rhimes, Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jones, Diddy, Naomi Campbell, Salma Hayek, Amber Heard, Janelle Monae, Lala, Kevin Hart, French Montana, Lisa Bonet, Olivia Wilde, Jason Sudeikis, Mindy Kaling, Deray, Lena Waithe, Lil Rel, Nick Jonas, and many more.

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One of the things that stood out for me while watching Black Panther (spoilers) was that both T’Challa as Erik Killmonger had a vision for the world. T’Challa believed caring for his own country was a priority rather than helping other countries. Killmonger showed some interesting ideas like how it first started at the same continent and there shouldn’t be a devision in who’s from Wakanda and who is not. They both have very opposite ideas and this shows why Killmonger was the antagonist to T’Challa, the protagonist. However, in the end the story showed that it did not matter that Killmoger ‘lost’ the battle because T’Challa offered the world his help. In a way Killmonger still got a part of his vision realized.

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Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther) on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine (March 8, 2018)

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Chadwick Boseman

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New Post has been published on http://rihanna21.info/rihanna-has-a-feature-on-n-e-r-ds-song-lemon-find-out/

Rihanna has a feature on N.E.R.D’s song Lemon. Find out…

Rihanna has a feature on N.E.R.D’s song Lemon. Find out what she wore in the music video @ http://bit.ly/2zYxWmY Source: Rihanna Style

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Lil Wayne Hospitalized: Drake And Nicki Minaj’s Mentor Suffers Seizure In Chicago