Jay-Z attends the Shawn Carter Foundation 20th Anniversary Black Tie Gala at Pier 60 on July 14, 2023 in New York City. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Roc Nation
Jay-Z rapped that he’s been “tryin’ to give you a million dollars worth of game for $9.99,” so where does he stand on the “Lunch With Jay-Z or $500,000 cash” meme?
“You gotta take the money,” Jay-Z, 53, told Gayle King in a preview of her upcoming chat with the rap star on CBS Mornings. In the first clip, published Monday, October 23, King, 68, argued that a dinner or lunch with Jay-Z would be a chance for someone to get all his street smarts and Wall Street knowledge. With Forbes estimating Jay-Z’s net worth to be at $2.5 billion in 2023, it seems his secrets would be worth $500,000, but the “99 Problems” rapper said that he’s already given them away.
“You got all that in the music for $10.99,” he said, referring to the base Tidal subscription (his original “9.99” lyric from “The Story of OJ” referenced the streaming subscription’s price back in 2017.) Beyonce’s husband said that taking a dinner over the money would be “a bad deal” and that he “wouldn’t tell you to cut a bad deal.”
“Take $500,000. Go buy some albums and listen to the albums. It’s all there. If you piece it together and really listen to the music for the words, for what it is, it’s all there. Everything that I said was gonna happen happened. Everything that I said I wanted to do, I’ve done. There’s the blueprint. The blueprint literally to me and my life and my journey is there already.”
“The Story of OJ,” from 2017’s 4:44, could be an example of Jay-Z freely sharing his knowledge. “I told him, ‘Please don’t die over the neighborhood / That your mama rentin’ / Take your drug money and buy the neighborhood / That’s how you rinse it,’” he rapped, saying that real estate is a much better investment than anything superficial.
“I bought every V12 engine / Wish I could take it back to the beginnin’ / I coulda bought a place in DUMBO before it was DUMBO / For like 2 million,” he rapped. “That same building today is worth 25 million / Guess how I’m feelin’? Dumbo.”
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Jay-Z’s musical career has been relatively dormant. 4:44 was his last solo album, and in 2018, he dropped Everything Is Love, his joint album with Beyonce, 42. Jay-Z has made some sparse appearances on others’ music, lending his voice to songs by DJ Khaled, Pusha T and Jay Electronica.
In 2021, Jay-Z and the late Nipsey Hussle’s “What It Feels Like” was part of Judas and the Black Messiah: The Inspired Album. In August, Jay-Z returned to Instagram to post a trailer for The Book of Clarence, a Biblical comedy starring Lakeith Stanfield. Jay-Z is one of the film’s producers and contributed to the movie’s soundtrack.
