single, â€Ĺ›Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem),” as well as the title from his breakthrough album, Volume 2 . . . Hard Knock, bore the marks of the little redhead moppet.
The release of Volume 2 . . . Hard Knock revealed a savvy blueprint that would transform Jay-Z from an agile and respected MC to hip-hop wunderkind and one of the most prolific and successful record-
ing artists of his generation. While a track like â€Ĺ›Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” was designed to gain him the wide radio and
video airplay necessary to achieve crossover celebrity, other less pub-licized and less radio-friendly songs maintained the ghetto-strident tone that spoke to his hard core base. Whereas the party anthems
dropped hits, the more introspective musings dropped keen insight
about race, poverty, and the view of the world from the other side.
Jay-Z, as much as any of his contemporaries, mastered this strategy and eĆłectively balanced the seemingly incompatible demands of pop
celebrity and street credibility.
Along with his partners, Damon Dash and Kareem â€Ĺ›Biggs” Burke,
Jay-Z leveraged their historic success in 1998 into a diverse lifestyle brand. Between 1999 and 2003 they built a lucrative urban sportswear label, Rocawear, a film and video production outfit, Roc Films, and an elite sports bar, The 40/40 Club (hip hop’s version of a theme
park), while also becoming a distributor of Armadale, a premium
vodka. The success they enjoyed parlaying their street-savvy ways
into a mini-conglomerate operation was yet another example of how
hip hop had become, at least for the elite creative class of artists, entrepreneurs, and executives it gave rise to, a fast-moving elevator up the social and economic ladder. It showed how hip hop, when virtu-ally nothing else could, provided opportunities for young people
stranded in America’s ghettos to translate their entrepreneurial skills into vibrant economic opportunities.
The Roc-A-Fella brand was an obvious nod to the wealth and
privileged status of the Rockefeller financial dynasty. In the end, it was as much an expression of resilience as it was opulence. The mak-ing of the Roc-A-Fella juggernaut represents in brilliant fashion,