Jay and Ye: The American Dream

Jay-Z (left) and Kanye West (right)

Jay-Z and Kanye West are not only two of my favorite rappers; they are also some of the best in the business. On their joint album Watch the Throne they discuss their journey to become ‘Kings.’ Both Jay-Z and Kanye have a rags-to-riches story, similar to Gatsby’s, which ultimately ends in them having the dream life: money, women, and cars. Jay-Z grew up in a Brooklyn slum with his single mother and a large family. He sold crack on the streets to make enough money for his family and he eventually hit it big in the Rap Game. From that point on he has had amazing success: winning 14 Grammy awards, he is the CEO of Rock-A-Fella Records, and a part-owner of the New York Nets. Kanye West, on the other hand, did not live the hard knock life that Jay-Z did but was certainly not privileged as a child. Kanye grew up in Chicago with his mother and gained his fame by producing beats for other local rappers. Like Jay-Z, Kanye is one of Rap’s most successful artists, claiming 17 Grammy’s and the founder of G.O.O.D Music.

 One of the duo's biggest hits is the song Otis, named after R&B star Otis Reading. 'Otis' references all the wealth that Jay-Z and Kanye have obtained over their career and how they flaunt it. In the music video (above) they take a Maybach, a $200,000 car, and trash it for no reason at all just to demonstrate that they don't have to wory about money anymore. In one of Jay-Z's verses he says:

Poppin’ bottles, puttin’ supermodels in the cab, proof
I guess I got my swagger back, truth
New watch alert, Hublot’s
Or the big face Rollie I got two of those

1920's Rolls Royce, a car much like
the one Gatsby would own

In these lines Jay-Z is exhibiting his riches by poppin' bottles and owning two big face Rollie's (Rollies is a slang term for the luxury watch company Rolex). Owning these things gives him swag and elevates his status in the rap community. Like Jay-Z, Gatsby flaunts his wealth to everyone by throwing big parties, having hundreds of exquisite shirts, having a unnecessarily large house, and by owning nice cars. Gatsby publicizes his wealth not only to gain social status but to obtain swag. At one point in the novel Daisy tells Gatsby, "you look so cool" (119). Gatsby believes that by showing off his fancy car and his enormous house that he will slide right into the culture of the "Old Money" aristocrats but in reality the people that came from wealth are more discreet about it. There was a stigma during that time period about making a name for yourself and working hard. Inherited wealth was looked much higher upon then earned wealth. Jay-Z and Kanye are proof that in today's society there is nothing wrong with doing anything possible to obtain your own piece of the American Dream.

 

Jay-Z has made it very public that when he was growing up he made his money by pedaling drugs in the street. It is a sense of pride for him and he has made a focus in his career to never loose sight of his roots. In the song "Made In America" Jay-Z references his drug career by saying phrases such as boiling water, and excuse to explain the smell of the crack to his grandmother, and choppin grams up.

Moonshiners in the 1920's

Gatsby made all of his money by being involved in the moonshine industry during the time of Prohibition. However, he tried to conceal the knowledge of his involvement in that line of work from the public and instead told people he was in the drug-store business. Gatsby didn't represent his roots like Jay-Z did because in his time he would have been looked down upon for not only making his money illegally, but simply making in and not inheriting it. A symbol of "Old Money" in Gatsby's time was to go to an Ivy League school or one of it prestigious equivalent. For this reason, Gatsby attended Oxford for a short period of time so that he could call himself an Oxford Man. Donna West, Kanye's mother, wanted her son to go to school so that he could get a proper education and make something meaningful out of his life. Kanye decided to do the opposite though and gave up college dreams in order to pursue his music career, even though he went against his mothers requests she still supported him. When Kanye became a sensation he paid homage to her and her support many times, openly talking about how he didn't go to school because while it is looked down upon in our society to not go to college, it was worse in Gatsby's time. 

This Land Belongs to Sharon Jones

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

It’s probably one of the most popular songs in American history, covered by many great singer-songwriters, but also sung by parents to children and choruses of kids at camp: “This Land is Your Land,” originally composed by the great American folk musician Woody Guthrie in 1944. The song is probably most appreciated today as an uncomplicatedly positive statement about the democracy of the United States, a land that belongs to all people, where anyone with enough hard work and determination can buy that house in the suburbs or that plot of land in the countryside. At the time it was composed, however, Guthrie was actually protesting the increasing privatization of the American landscape. As his guitar reads, “This Machine Kills Fascists”—and he wasn’t talking about the ones in Germany. In many ways, he was standing up for the George Wilson’s of America against the Tom Buchanans, the working class versus the elite. While Tom waltzes freely into George's shop and steals his wife, we cannot imagine George doing the reverse, can we?

Guthrie and his guitar

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
This land was made for you and me.

When the contemporary rhythm and blues singer Sharon Jones sings “This Land is Your Land” with the Dap-Kings, the meaning of the song takes on a whole new connotation. First there is the simple fact that a black woman is singing the lyrics. “This land is my land” just means something different for a white man and a black woman in America. Let’s remember that blacks have been in this country as slaves nearly as long as they have been here free. Even in 1944, could a black woman, or even a black man for that matter, travel freely and safely from "California to New York Island"? To say that such movement is possible, then, from the perspective of an African American woman, is a powerful statement of property ownership and civil rights made by the descendent of slaves. Moreover, the “Private Property” signs of one of Guthrie’s alternative verses included in the Dap-Kings version take on a whole new meaning, reminding the listened of similar signs during the Jim Crow South that specifically limited the movement of African Americans in ways more marked and dangerous than Guthrie’s and other white men ever experienced. 

Then there’s the music, which unlike the lyrics, are significantly altered from the original Guthrie tune. Rather than the simple and singular folk guitar of Guthrie, an individual statement, The Dap-Kings that back Jones are a multi-instrument ensemble, featuring not one but three guitars, drums, and a suite of horns. The song thus becomes a statement about the rights of the group, not just the individual, as if to say, everyone deserves this land, not just the few. Moreover, the musical aesthetic of this version of “This Land is Your Land”—as with most releases off the Daptone label, borrowed from directly for Amy Winehouse's Back to Black—is distinctly Motown, referencing a pivotal moment in black musical entrepreneurship in the 1960s that corresponded with the height of the Civil Rights Era. Motown played a crucial roll in integrating the American music scene and bringing black-owned, -produced and -performed music to white audiences. The sound of the track, then, is the soulful sound of black musical and economic power, emphatically stated in the crisp, clipped horn parts that seem to echo the lyrics of the song similarly laying claim to the “land” of America. Huh!

The original Motown

Ball so hard, this shit weird
We ain’t even s’pose to be here,
Ball so hard, since we here
It’s only right that we be fair. 

- Jay-Z, "Niggaz in Paris" 

When Nick and Gatsby are passed on the Long Island Expressway by a limousine full of African Americans being chauffeured by a white driver, the narrator thinks, "Anything can happen...even Gatsby could happen" (73). It’s a remarkable scene for Nick in part because these African Americans enjoying their freedom represent a major social change over the past few decades in American history. In the first half of the twentieth century, blacks left the South in record numbers and settled in Northern cities like New York, hoping for a better life. The Harlem Renaissance, that flourishing of black artistic culture in the 1920s, was happening at the same time that The Great Gatsby was written and represented a significant shift in American race relations. But given Tom's racist comments at the beginning of the book, though, this success was limited. There was still much poverty and suffering for African American migrants arriving in the North and it would take . Again, while we might imagine Gatsby and Nick going to a Harlem jazz club with Daisy and Jordan, it's hard to imagine the same racial diversity at one of Gatsby's parties. The movement of African Americans was still limited. 

(This scene is such a meaningful and powerful one, I was not surprised to see it featured in the trailers for the new Gatsby movie, along with a sample from Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “Church of the Wild”--it's one of the first shots as the camera zooms in on New York City at the opening of the clip. I'm also not surprised that a track from Watch the Throne was chosen for the 2013 The Great Gatsby. That album's obsession with fame, fortune, and the American dream is shared by many characters in the book. I doubt though that Gatsby would tolerate his Rolls being taken apart the way that Ye and Jay do to the Maybach in the video for "Otis"!)

Jay-Z and Jay-Gatz, "Niggas" and Nouveau Riche in Paris and West Egg

This growth of punctilious discrimination as to qualitative excellence in eating, drinking, etc. presently affects not only the manner of life, but also the training and intellectual activity of the gentleman of leisure. He is no longer simply the successful, aggressive male,—the man of strength, resource, and intrepidity. In order to avoid stultification he must also cultivate his tastes, for it now becomes incumbent on him to discriminate with some nicety between the noble and the ignoble in consumable goods. He becomes a connoisseur in creditable viands of various degrees of merit, in manly beverages and trinkets, in seemly apparel and architecture, in weapons, games, dancers, and the narcotics.

- Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

What's Gucci, my nigga? What's Louis, my killa?
What's drugs, my dealer? What's that jacket, Margiela?

- Jay-Z, "Niggas in Paris" (2011)

Thorstein Veblen's concept of "conspicuous consumption" is as easy to apply to the quote nouveau riche unquote of hip hop as it is to fictional West Eggers like the theatrical eponymous MC of Fitzgerald's Great American Novel. Certainly Jay Gatsby has much in common with hip hop impresarios like Jay-Z himself--"The Great Gatsby" surely would have been a rap name if Fitzgerald had not taken it first; it even references the gatling gun popular both among the gangsters of the 1920s and the gangsta rappers of 1990s. More to the point, both Jay-Gatz and Jay-Z came from humble origins, both rose to prominence in part through nefarious means. As newly rich, then, they also share what Thorstein referred to as a "punctilious discrimination as to qualitative excellence." In short, they both know, and demonstrate their knowledge of, the best brands to buy in fashion, cars, and houses (see my reading of Jay-Z's reading of New York architecture). We might, then, view the extravagance of "Niggas in Paris," and Watch the Throne more generally, as hollow yet hopeful in much the same way that Fitzgerald seems to view Gatsby's manifold displays of wealth.

"Ball so hard, this shit weird
We ain’t even s’pose to be here,
Ball so hard, since we here
It’s only right that we be fair."

When Nick and Gatsby are passed on the Long Island Expressway by a limousine full of African Americans, the narrator thinks, "Anything can happen...even Gatsby could happen" (73). Fitzgerald thus aligns Gatsby's mysterious wealth with that of these newly and upwardly

mobile blacks--of course African Americans were making great strides during the Harlem Renaissance just as industrialists were achieving success during the "boom" of the Roaring Twenties. Again, Jay Gatsby and Jay-Z in particular share similar rags to riches American dream narratives. In telling his own success story, Jay-Z aligns himself with the era of the robber barons, naming his brand after the famous industrialist of the early twentieth century. In a way, so does Gatz in his reinvention of himself as Gatsby. Like the lower class Gatz, Jay-Z "ain't spose to be here"; he was born working class and they were born black. There is something that defies the odds in Jay-Z's success: as a young black man in postindustrial America--growing up in the Marcy Projects of Bed-Stuy--the statistics outline a grimmer fate. As he raps, "I'm supposed to be locked up," that is, in prison. Similarly, as a young working class man in industrial America, Gatz should never have made it even to West Egg.

The "spectroscopic gayety" of Gatsby's house parties is matched by the kaleidoscopic (almost epileptic!) bling bling of Jay and Ye in concert in the video for "Niggas in Paris" (49). Models and Gothic architecture are multiplied fantastically through digital effects throughout what is essentially a concert film. While Gatsby's mansion is a "factual imitation of some Hotel de Villein Normandy," it is Notre Dame de Paris that is appropriated by the rappers to evidence their presence in Paris and, more broadly, their "punctilious discrimination" (9). At roughly the 3 minute mark, the Parisian landmark is offered as bridge to Kanye's intro to the "Watch the Throne" theme. The whole Watch the Throne album at once a parallels Gatsby's celebrations of himself through his house parties and offers a social commentary on the meaning of such wealth similar to that in Fitzgerald's novel. While I for one was one of the first haters of the seemingly uncritical pomp of "Watch the Throne," like "East Egg condescending to West Egg," there is a social statement in the fact, as Jay raps in "Otis": "not bad, huh? for some immigrants" (49).

"Ball so hard, got a broke clock, Rolleys that don't tick tock

Audemars that's losing time, hidden behind all these big rocks."

Listening to Jay-Z and Kanye West's "Niggas in Paris," like many of their respective songs, requires a connoisseur's annotations for the multiple allusions to fashion and other luxury industries. We may know Gucci and Louis, at least by name, but Margiela? He's a Belgian fashion designer. Does Beyonce, like Daisy, cry at the beauty of Jay-Z's shirts? We may know about Rollex, but Audemars? Audemars Piguet is a Swiss luxury watchmaker with its origins in the nineteenth century. Jay's particular Audemars is so blinged out with diamonds that he can't even tell the time. We similarly need an encyclopedia to understand the many aristocratic allusions used to describe Gatsby's wealth: the "Marie Antoinette music rooms and Restoration salons" and "Adam study" of his West Egg mansion.

"I’d seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory, we started to town."

Gatsby's Rolls-Royce is an emphatic display of his wealth, an attempt to prove his financial prowess and taste to condescending East Eggers. His choice of Rolls is a classic one, though he may have chosen too many options to the point that the car appears garish rather than staid, its "labyrinth of windshields [mirroring] a dozen suns" (68). Something different is going on in Jay-Z and Kanye West's destruction and recreation of DaimlerChrysler AG's Maybach 57 in the video for "Otis." The car cost $350,000 to buy and $150,000 to take apart. They literally dismantle a symbol of old wealth and rebuild it according to their own specs, and then proceed to joy ride with a four models precariously piled in the back seat. As "gentleman of leisure," West and Z prove themselves "connoisseur[s] in creditable viands of various degrees of merit," but they also rewrite the book of etiquette for such conspicuous consumption. With their joyous chopping and then joy riding of the Maybach 57, Z and West flaunt their own misappropriation of old wealth; unlike Gatsby, they are not trying to be anything but themselves. The Maybach 57 was sold at auction with the proceeds benefitting East African drought relief.