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March 29, 2011
Jay-Z’s $450 million Business Empire
Yahoo! Finance
by Daniel Gross
Jay-Z's career and business interests are vivid testimony to the mainstreaming of hip-hop culture. Deals come his way in part because he is, simply put, much cooler and culturally relevant than older guys in suits. It's not simply that he can attract a crowd, but that he lends a kind of legitimacy to all sorts of ventures — including the efforts to build a huge arena/ development to house the New Jersey Nets in Brooklyn. The New Jersey Nets, as Greenburg notes, had long been a second-tier team in the NBA, and an afterthought in New York. Facing political obstacles and community opposition, Nets owner Bruce Ratner offered Jay-Z a small ownership stake in exchange for becoming one of the public faces of the project. Another potential bonus: the other owners thought Jay-Z could help attract top talent like LeBron James to the Nets.
That hasn't quite worked out.
Posted by eric at March 29, 2011 10:39 AM