Why Jay-Z’s Roc Nation–NFL Deal Is So Puzzling
On Tuesday, the National Football League announced a splashy new venture: a partnership with Roc Nation, the label run by Jay-Z (a.k.a. Shawn Carter). In his new post, The Wall Street Journal reported, Jay-Z will help to directly shape the NFL’s social-justice program and oversee much of the league’s entertainment programming, including the halftime show. (Jay-Z will not be required to perform, but Roger Goodell, the league’s commissioner, has expressed his hope that the rapper will soon.)
The Brooklyn entertainer and businessman, who the line “I said no to the Super Bowl: You need me, I don’t need you,” is now lending his cultural cachet to the sports institution that has often inhibited its players’ expressions of solidarity with their own communities. Taken optimistically, Jay-Z’s latest move could be read as a calculated choice to bolster his (and Roc Nation’s) broadening repertoire of (2017) traced the life of a young man who’d died by suicide after his years-long detention on New York City’s Rikers Island, often in solitary confinement, for having allegedly stolen a backpack as a teenager. The , released last week, follows the 12-year legal saga of the Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill, who is signed to Roc Nation (and around whom many NFL players have rallied in recent years). Both of these artistic works are clear-eyed narrative productions; they invite viewers to learn about and see the human beings affected by the daily indignities of an obfuscatory system.
