Jay-Z has had a few landmark accomplishments over the past few weeks. The mogul sold a 50% stake in his Ace Of Spades champagne to LVMH and sold a majority stake in Tidal to Square Inc. in a $297 million deal. While Hov was applauded for the recent deals, DJ Akademiks spoke out against the rapper for his deals, especially the latter.
While Akademiks initially acknowledged that Jay-Z selling his Tidal stake to Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey, he expressed his belief that the Hip Hop mogul has been using the "Black-owned" phrase as a bait and switch tactic to get people to buy into his companies.
"Jay-Z bought a company, he said it was for Black creators. He said people shouldn't support Apple and Spotify because they're White-owned and he wanted to have something for the culture, for the artists, by the artists, and he wanted to keep it Black-owned and he wanted to do it that way," Akademiks said. "He did many B-Side concerts and s*** like that talking about Black excellence, Black power, you should support him because he owned a Black business even though we found out later when they went to Sweden at Tidal headquarters, pretty much not one of the employees or the higher executive people at Tidal were Black."
Akademiks continued by pointing out Tidal's earlier deal with Sprint and stating that the streaming service is "the Black-owned product is now owned by Jack Dorsey, the White man." The former Everyday Struggle host accused Jay-Z of "guilting" people into supporting his businesses only to sell them for his own personal reasons.
"Jay-Z is the classic 'bait & switch' person and I think that's the only thing I don't like about the way he goes about things," Ak added. "I think he does his business how he should do it but he is one of the people who will say, 'Hey, why ya'll don't f*** with me? I'm Black. Yo, I'm doing it for Black people!' But he's not doing it for Black people, he's doing it for his own selfish means."
Ak stated that he finds nothing wrong with what Jay is doing, but feels it's wrong to guilt consumers into supporting a Black business that's eventually sold to a White-owned corporation.
