Word: hip-hop
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...HIP-HOP...
...Sunday nights because that's when her friends carp about Monday mornings. "They hate me," she says. "I spend so much time talking about how I can't wait to go to work." As one of 12 members of a strategy group at Roc-A-Fella Enterprises, a diversified hip-hop marketing company, she designs CD covers, creates ads for the Rocawear clothing line and writes marketing plans for the firm's latest films. "They're the brain trust," says CEO Damon Dash, who launched his billion-dollar music, fashion and movie empire with rapper Jay-Z eight years...
...when hip-hop cliche holds that most rappers are irrelevant, bankrupt or dead, Jay-Z is idolized, loaded and routinely spotted within kissing distance of Beyonce Knowles (which is its own special way of being alive). JayZ is also profoundly bored. "I've had it with the rap game," he says. "Time to focus on other things. That's why I'm retiring...
...announced his retirement before, but the bulk of his fans still don't believe he's serious. Some think Jay-Z is trying to pull off an elaborate marketing ploy; others can't understand why he would retire from the hip-hop fantasy life. The truth is, it's his fantasy to pull off marketing coups. To coincide with his retirement, Jay-Z is taking a commercial victory lap that includes a final record, The Black Album; a Reebok shoe; a concert tour; and an autobiography to be published by MTV Books (which just might help get the video...
...that he can go no further, climb no higher, get no better. Meanwhile, we’re forced to adjust our standards, reconciling Jay-Z’s raps with “real” poetry—which presumably reach a level of emotion and enlightenment that hip-hop could never approach. He’s just talking about himself the whole time, isn’t he? About how great he is, how successful his career’s been? That’s bad, right? That’s shallow...