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December 2, 2006
Music: The Coolest Mogul
MSNBC Newsweek
Multimillionaire business exec Shawn Carter—Jay-Z to you—is 36 and still hasn't lost his street cred. How'd he manage that?
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"The funny thing," Carter says, "is that I never wanted to be famous. When I was making money dealing drugs, I had the sense of being famous before I was famous." Now that he's making megamoney—enough to own at least one Manhattan skyscraper and a stake in the New Jersey Nets basketball team—his next dream is to bring the Nets to his old 'hood. He's part of a $2.5 billion Brooklyn renovation project that includes moving the team to the borough and housing it in a Frank Gehry-designed stadium complex. Many area residents aren't happy about the prospect of more traffic and higher real-estate prices. "It's a switch for me to be on this development side of things," Carter says. "You just have to know in your heart that you're doing the right thing. What if there were a team in Brooklyn? It would bring so much pride—forget about it! I might cry the first day if it ever happens. You know how people from Brooklyn get about Brooklyn."
NoLandGrab: Note to Jay-Z: The way people "get" about Brooklyn is the same way people "get" about their homes: they don't want them taken away and demolished (sorry, "RENOVATED") without their consent. Maybe you should stop by Freddy's and check on your "street cred." Your song 'Politics as Usual' is not on the jukebox, despite such telling lyrics as "No waitin I'll make your block infrared hot I'm like Satan."
Posted by amy at December 2, 2006 10:27 AM