“Caught Their Eyes”: Jay-Z’s Impact on the Representation of Black Masculinity

Jay-Z in Los Angeles. Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

The self-awareness and confidence of Shawn Corey Carter – and the evolutionary process which sustains it – is undeniable, and explains how he has been able to retain his position as Hip-Hop’s G.O.A.T. at an age where most have retired from the game. Like Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, James Brown, and Huey Newton, Shawn – also known as Jay-Z or, Jigga and Hov for ‘day-one’ fans – has always known the greatness which lies within. Always confident in himself and his artistry, Jay-Z has dropped bars like: “Hov’s a living legend and I’ll tell you why/ Everybody wanna be Hov and Hov’s still alive”[1] and “I’m so far ahead of my time, I’m ’bout to start another life/Look behind you, I’m ’bout to pass you twice.”[2] In a society where Black men are dehumanized and vilified, Shawn’s self-awareness and confidence is radical, which might explain why he is cherished among those who look like him. His evolution from quiet hustler to a business mogul, self-corrected, loving husband and doting father is admirable, making him a hero to Black boys and men in the hood. If Jay-Z can ‘boss up’, so can they. What is more inspiring is, despite the changes life has bestowed upon him, Shawn has, at the core, remained the same ‘ole Hov. He still hustles quietly, venturing outside of Hip-Hop making historical business deals, all while bringing the culture to the table. Each of his thirteen studio albums and rare full length interviews has impacted the imagery of Black masculinity, catching the eyes of white mainstream culture and seizing the hearts of Black men and boys across diverse socio-economic backgrounds. For them, Jay-Z is proof that “ghetto born black seeds still grow[3]” and self-awareness is the trait of a ‘real nigga’ which in the hood, is a grown man.

Jay-Z’s self-awareness has been ever present, keeping him confident, yet thoughtful. While he often boasts about his success, he also makes great strides to express the regrets and losses which he now bears as a result. Crack cocaine’s intrusion into predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods in the 1980s and 90s is partly responsible for our introduction to Jay-Z (White 76). His lyrical genius – the sophistication of his wordplay and vividness of his metaphors – told us of the harsh reality of growing up in Brooklyn’s Marcy Housing Projects and the decisions many young Black men felt forced to make in order to survive poverty. Jay-Z’s first studio album, Reasonable Doubt, took Hip-Hop by storm; while many rappers before him alluded to hustling, Jay-Z told us (in just enough details) what street work was really like. Coolly describing how slinging crack put him on the path from “bricks to billboards” (76) and familiarizing the hood with expensive brands like Cristal and Lexus, Jay-Z became the hood’s big homie. We all wished we rolled with him, even more, we all wanted to be him. His self-awareness pushed him to go beyond “bottles and hoes” rap though, he also talked freely about the price of the game. On “D’Evils” he reflects on how wicked and soul-altering the streets truly are with bars like: “It gets dangerous, money and power is changin’ us/And now we’re lethal, infected with D’evils.” Jay-Z turned the recording booth into therapy sessions, laying his conscious bare, working out the conflicted emotions he held towards gaining wealth at such a high price. Whereas N.W.A. before him contextualized crack dealing within inner-city street gang culture, Jay-Z was different. He had no gang affiliations, he hustled because he needed to survive, and as he would often remind us years after Reasonable Doubt – he was great at it. In his memoir Decoded (2010), Jay-Z would explain that the hustler’s life, the Mafioso persona expressed on Reasonable Doubt was very much intertwined with his burgeoning rap career (White 76). Had he never hustled cocaine, we may not have ever heard his voice ride a beat, which means no Roc-A-Fella, no Tidal (the way we know it, at least), and would there even be a Rihanna or J. Cole (the way we know them, at least)? This confession clashes with his conscience as it is not his desire to have the ‘young homies’ caught up in “d’evils” (the evils).

Historically, Black men have been presented as irresponsible and brutish. Jay-Z shatters that stereotype, constructing a different image of Black masculinity. In “D’Evils” and “Can I Live?”, he not only holds himself accountable, he does so eloquently. Miles White, author of From Jim Crow to Jay-Z: Race, Rap, and the Performance of Masculinity, observes that the references in Jay-Z’s music to drug dealing are “so nuanced and artful that they appear no more ominous than a Robert De Niro gangster film, except that he is dealing in the register of the real rather than weaving the fictions of screenwriters” (81). When he quips: “Lock my body, can’t trap my mind/Easily explain why we adapt to crime/I’d rather die enormous than live dormant, that’s how we on it” on “Can I Live?” he is acknowledging that drug dealing was a choice he made, taking responsibility for his actions, but he also provides a pointed and clever explanation for them. As his sound evolves, so does his self-awareness. White remarks, “Jay-Z’s evolutionary arc has also seen him move from a bad nigger figure. . . He has, after having attained riches beyond even his own wildest fantasies, increasingly looked for ways in which to, as he puts it, be helpful” (81). One of the central themes on Jay-Z’s most recent studio album, 4:44, is financial freedom advice for his fellow Black men with lines such as: “Take your drug money and buy the neighborhood/That’s how you rinse it” and “General wealth/That’s the key.” His evolution from Mafioso, smooth hustler to the Black male Suze Orman posits him as the hood’s Moses; he has come to set the captives free, offering ways in which we can fight our way out of poverty. While white media commentators seemed awed by Jay-Z’s crash course on finances, none of us in the hood were as rappers traditionally “present a highly articulated awareness and sense of place” (Oliver 925).

The presentation of Black men as incapable of intellectual activity has been used to uphold white patriarchy, slavery, and racism but his wordplay destroys the image of Black masculinity as intellectually stunted. Jay-Z’s rhymes, riddled with triple entendres, makes him the hood’s Shakespeare. In her article which examines representations of Black masculinity in Hip-Hop, Crystal Belle remarks, “Intellectualism refers to the sophistication found in the lyrics of many mainstream hip-hop songs such as Jay-Z and Kanye West’s hit “Otis” when Jay-Z declares, ‘Build your fences, we diggin’ tunnels/Can’t you see? We gettin’ money up under you.’ Through the use of wordplay, these lines connote the Underground Railroad and the luxuries of capitalism that dominate society” (3). Jay-Z flips the general conception of education and production of knowledge on its head; he is a high school dropout with an incredible literary skillset that is the sole source of his “rags to riches” journey, moving from dealing crack cocaine to “calling shots” in boardrooms and making legitimate multi-million dollar deals. Even more, his skillset has helped him to tell the hood’s stories; he “humanizes the often dehumanizing experience of being black and impoverished, of hustling street drugs for spare change and being willing to kill or die for it because the alternative appear no better” (White 83).

In his art, under the gaze of white mainstream culture, Jay-Z lets the world know that the rage and pain Black boys and men live with daily is not one dimensional, and the price of being a ‘real nigga’ in a world that hates all niggers is often very high. He brings to the forefront a complexity of Black masculinity that white mainstream culture has often dismissed. He catches their eyes, forcing them to look upon the damage that the American government and society at large has inflicted upon Black boys and men. On American Gangster, his 2007 album largely inspired by Frank Lucas’ story, he makes the connections between U.S. government complicity in crack cocaine’s arrival in predominantly Black, inner-city communities on the east and west coasts and how the violence that stemmed from drug-fueled wars spilled over into Hip-Hop when he rhymes: “Blame Reagan for making me a monster/Blame Oliver North and Iran-Contra/I ran contraband that they sponsored.” Jay-Z looks defiantly at U.S. institutions and tells them they are responsible for the violence and subsequent consequences that have ravaged Black neighborhoods since the 1980s. On another track, “Pray”, Jay-Z says: “I didn’t choose this life, this life chose me/Around here it’s the shit that you just do.” The idea that drug dealing is the only source of survival – aside from hoop and mic dreams, as J. Cole wistfully suggests on “Immortal” (They tellin niggas, ‘sell dope, rap, or go to NBA) – is a direct result of the institutionalized racism and systemic oppression that marginalizes Black boys and men from gaining access to other (legitimate) avenues of income. When Jay-Z declared, “Financial freedom my only hope” (“Story of O.J.”, 4:44) and “So fuck what we sellin’/Fuck is we makin?” (“Moonlight”, 4:44), he brought attention to the staggering economic disparities found in Black communities in comparison to white ones. Jay-Z firmly believes that economic empowerment can be the means whereby racial equality and social justice can be achieved.

Jay-Z consistently uses the weight of his celebrity to catch the eyes of white mainstream culture regarding social equity and justice. In the most recent years, in addition to his music, Jay-Z has used film to bring awareness to the racial patterns that still plague the American criminal justice system. In 2016, he shared his short animated documentary, The War on Drugs is an Epic Fail, through The New York Times[4] that discussed how Nixon’s “War on Drugs” and Reaganomics both served as the catalyst for the mass incarceration of African American men. He has since produced mini-series that explored the Kalief Browder story and Trayvon Martin’s murder. Jay-Z has used these mini-series to express the opinions held at large by African Americans, to encourage people to get involved in their local politics, and to push the conversation about bail reform in his hometown of New York City to the forefront of the governor’s agenda. Like Angela Davis before him, Jay-Z is also an advocate for prison reform, holding conferences and rallies to highlight how unfair sentencing and probation practices contributes greatly to the plight of Black men. His decision to quietly spend millions on Meek Mill’s legal fees not only served as tremendous help to a peer and business associate, but it made him a bold advocate for prison reform. For Jay-Z, Meek Mill’s case was no different from the cases of millions of Black men. While Jay-Z presents Black masculinity in a manner that is exclusive to the streets in his early albums, he has since evolved to present Black masculinity in a manner white mainstream culture often refutes: intellectually.

Jay-Z’s impact on Black masculinity does not end with shattering the myth of the unintelligent brute, but he has also shown white mainstream culture that Black masculinity holds within it a measure of softness and a fierce ability to give and receive love –  both things that have been consistently denied since slavery. His marriage to Beyoncé and his interaction with their children serves as proof that Black men, especially those from the hood, can be loving husbands and doting dads. His self-awareness has always enabled him to be rather intimate with his fans through his art, making him an example of an emotionally intelligent Black man. One of his most personal songs, before his mostly confessional album 4:44, is “Lost One” on 2006’s Kingdom Come. On the track he bares his soul, talking about the heartaches he has experienced – the loss of friends turned business partners, the brief time he and Beyoncé gave their relationship a break, and the loss of his nephew. Whereas the albums before Kingdom Come centers his knack for hustling and expensive tastes, “Lost One” gives us a more contemplative Jay-Z. His transparency in lines like: “Can’t run from the pain/Go towards it” and “So I have to give her free time/Even if it hurts”, “Lost One” removes the layers of bravado and tough guy persona typically associated with both Black masculinity and Hip-Hop, revealing that Black men do indeed hurt and grieve. Day one fans have argued his relationship with Beyoncé is responsible for the more intimate and emotional art, and they may very well be right; since their coupling, it is hard to discuss his music without referencing her. This fact chips away at the stereotypical image of the Black man as a ‘player’ who is incapable of committing to a meaningful relationship. Jay-Z’s marriage to Beyoncé and the life he has built with her, is an image rarely found in Hip-Hop as it contradicts the stereotypical “big pimpin” imagery typically perpetuated, even by Jay-Z himself.

In 2016, Beyoncé released Lemonade, an album that centered on the trials and tribulations of Black womanhood along with Jay-Z’s infidelity. One song in particular, “Sandcastles”, exposes the anguish his betrayal has caused. Her voice, raw and raspy, reflects her pain as she sings: “Dishes smashed on my counter from our last encounter/Pictures snatched out the frame/Bitch, I scratched out your name and your face/What is it about you that I can’t erase, baby?” Beyoncé let her guard down on Lemonade for all the world to see that she was not perfect nor did she have the perfect life that her Beehive envisioned. In fact, she and Jay-Z, everyone’s #couplegoals, had hit a rough patch and she was hurting, deeply. In anticipation for the HBO live special, her fans speculated on social media that the Lemonade premiere was an audiovisual divorce announcement (Harper 2). They were wrong. In the end, Beyoncé chose to forgive her husband. The 1-minute song “Forward” comes right after “Sandcastles” and serves as the album’s turning point; choosing to leave the pain of his infidelity behind, she sweetly sings: “Go back to your sleep in your favorite spot just next to me.” Though fans of both wife and husband were relieved the two decided to stick it out and continue to “love happy”, many wondered how Jay-Z felt about Beyoncé’s ‘tell-all’ album and, more importantly, how he could have caused her so much pain. They would get their answer sooner than they thought.

One year later – on June 30 – Jay-Z released 4:44, his most intimate album ever. The title track, an apology and open letter, is his direct response to his wife. Jay-Z humbles himself, taking responsibility for his selfish actions with thoughtful lines such as: “And I apologize ’cause at your best you are love/And because I fall short of what I say I’m all about.” Antonia Randolph reflects on what she calls the “Miseducation of Jay-Z” in her recent article. She observes that Jay-Z’s “views on romantic relationships on earlier albums would not have prepared us for the vulnerability he shows on “4:44.” Still, his thinking about relationships has evolved over the course of his album (397). When Jay-Z performs “4:44” live[5], the stage is empty and the spotlight is on him; his head is held low and his eyes are closed as if he is in a confessional booth. In that moment, it seems as if it is just he and God – in truth, the regret of his infidelity and the fear of losing his family lurks in the shadow. He gently raps: “I suck at love, I think I need a do-over/I will be emotionally available if I invited you over/I stew over, what if you over my shit?” The softness and agony he reveals on “4:44” combats the interpretation of Black men as unfeeling. Randolph states that the production of 4:44’s title track was a symbolic unmasking, where he “stepped out of the ‘Jay-Z’ persona and spoke to Beyoncé as her husband, Shawn” (401). Jay-Z used the album to find a place of honesty to rebuild his marriage. Furthermore, he posits himself as Hip-Hop’s elderman, doling out relationship advice to Black male listeners, teaching them “about the importance of honesty, commitment, and equity in relationships” (Randolph 398).

Jay-Z did not have to embrace the rules or expectations of white patriarchy; there was no upward suasion on his part. As White observes, “In making the leap from nefarious to legitimate largely on his own terms, Jay-Z, like Muhammad Ali in the 1960s and 1970s, transformed not only his representation of himself but constructed a compelling new model of black masculinity that may have begun in brute acts but ultimately transcended them, unapologetically and with his dignity in tact” (85). Jay-Z has positively impacted the representation of Black masculinity using many of the same characteristics that white mainstream media typically presents negatively. He saw no need to assimilate to white patriarchal standards of masculinity in order to present Black masculinity in a manner that is both authentic and appealing, giving other Black boys and men an image that better reflects their lived experience.

---

Endnotes

[1] https://genius.com/Kanye-west-never-let-me-down-lyrics

[2] https://genius.com/Jay-z-hovi-baby-lyrics

[3] https://genius.com/2pac-everything-they-owe-lyrics

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000004642370/jay-z-the-war-on-drugs-is-an-epic-fail.html

[5] I saw him live at Barclay’s Center on November 26, 2017.

---

Works Cited

 

Belle, Crystal. “From Jay-Z to Dead Prez: Examining Representations of Black Masculinity in Mainstream Versus Underground Hip-Hop Music.” Journal of Black Studies (2014): 1-14. Document.

Ducille, Ann. “Introduction: Black Marriage and Meaning from Antoney and Isabella to “Beyonce and Her Husband”.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies (2018): 1-5. Document.

Harper, Paula. “”Sandcastles” and Beyonce’s Break.” American Music Review (2018): 1-6. Document.

Neal, Mark Anthony. “NIGGA: The 21st-Century Theoretical Superhero.” Cultural Anthropolgy (2013): 556-563. Document.

Oliver, William. “”The Streets”: An Alternative Black Male Socialization Institution.” Journal of Black Studies (2006): 918-937. Document.

Oware, Matthew. “Decent Daddy, Imperfect Daddy: Black Male Rap Artists’ Views of Fatherhood and the Family.” Journal of African American Studies (2011): 327-351. Document.

Randolph, Antonia. “When Men Bive Birth to Intimacy: the Case of Jay-Z’s “4:44″.” Journal of African American Studies (2018): 393-406. Document.

White, Miles. “Real Niggas: Black Men, Hard Men, and the Rise of Gangsta Culture.” White, Miles. From Jim Crow to Jay-Z: Race, Rap, and the Perfomance of Masculinity. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2011. 63-88. Document.