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'I know I got angels watching over me'

Jay-Z talks to Barry Egan about angels, positivity and how he hopes the US is ready for President Obama

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Sunday Jun 8 2008

IT'S the new slavery: black men in US jails. The high black incarceration rate in American prisons -- almost 5 per cent of all black males in the United States were incarcerated compared with 0.7 of white males -- has led some black commentators to claim that a highly lucrative new slave trade is booming.

"It is another version of slavery in America," influential American rapper Jay-Z tells me. (To see just how influential he is, look at the effect that his endorsement of Barack Obama had on the campaign for the Democratic nomination.)

"It is a big social problem in America. The money doesn't trickle down to the poor communities, the poor black communities especially, and you can see the results; the anger.

"My whole message is positivity, like Obama. There is a big business in the jail system. People are making huge money on it off blacks."

Worth something in the region of $500m himself -- as CEO of Def Jam records and co-owner of the Jersey Nets basketball team, to say nothing of his clothing company, CD releases and concert tours -- Jay-Z could have been locked up himself, had fate not intervened.

Back in his youth, growing up in the tough Marcy projects of Brooklyn, Shawn Carter (Jay-Z's real name) was a hardened drug dealer -- crack cocaine his specialty -- on the mean streets. He raps about it on American Gangster, his latest album, which was partly inspired by the Denzel Washington movie of the same name about a black dealer.

You're a multi-millionaire. You're married to Beyonce. You're friends with Barack Obama. ("I gotta admit, lately I've been listening to a lot of Jay-Z," Barack said recently.) You hang out with Bono and Donald Trump. You are one of the most famous -- and richest -- men in America.

"Every black kid in America looks up to Jay as a role model," said fellow rapper Kanye West.

Do you ever wonder how things could have been so different for you when you consider your troubled past? You could be in jail now.

"I think about that every day," Jay-Z says. "I thank God every day for this blessing. Not a day goes by when I don't think how lucky I've been. I know I have angels. I know I got them watching over me. My message is positivity. I believe in Martin Luther King. He was right in what he said."

I saw Jay-Z play at the MGM Grand last month in front of 10,000 people. With images of Obama and King flashing behind him on the screen, as well as George W Bush and Hurricane Katrina-stricken New Orleans, Jay-Z repeatedly asked the crowd: "Are you ready for change?"

Does he think America is ready for change, for the country's first black prez?

"I hope so. I pray that it is," he says. "It is going to happen. Like Martin Luther King said, this dream is going to happen in America soon. I am not in politics but I am interested in people, especially kids who are in any away disenfranchised in America."

And Jay-Z -- the maestro of hard-edged urban rap -- helped Obama to target those disenfranchised black youths.

There was also the moment in January when Obama walked into his victory party in Des Moines, Iowa, on January 3 to the sound of Jay-Z's 99 Problems. In it, Jay-Z quips: "I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one." Hillary was allegedly incandescent with rage. "I heard that story too," Jay-Z laughs.

Last month, during a campaign rally in Raleigh, Obama made an obvious reference to Jay-Z. The self-confessed hip hop fan repeatedly brushed imaginary dirt off his shoulder. He was alluding to a song in which Jay-Z' sings: "If you feelin' like a pimp . . . go and brush your shoulders off. Get that dirt off your shoulder." ("That dirt" being one Rodham Clinton.) He laughs at the whole controversy.

Jay-Z has a healthy sense of humour. At the Las Vegas show I attended he started to play the most famous song of Beyonce -- now reportedly his wife -- which he produced, Crazy in Love, then he cut it off abruptly, saying, "Sorry, B." Three weeks later in New York, he is telling me that he loves sarcasm. "I love Larry David. That is genius. I love that kind of wit."

He is also fond of a certain U2 singer's wit. Jay-Z and Beyonce were pictured in late summer 2003, hanging out with Bono and Ali in France.

"They are great people. Bono is a great guy. Man, he has a heart the size of Brooklyn," Jay-Z says.

Ask the private-jet-owning rap mogul from dirt-poor beginnings how he keeps it real -- to coin a rap cliché -- and he says he was brought up with that sense of himself. "My mother brought me up like that, and not to judge a person that you don't know."

Jay-Z is possibly referring to Noel Gallagher. The Oasis contrarian declared recently that Jay-Z was the wrong choice to headline the normally white guitar-friendly English festival Glastonbury.

Do you think Gallagher's comments were racist?

"Racist? I don't know about that, but it has overtones to say a rap artist isn't right for a festival in England. I don't know Noel Gallagher. I have never met him. I haven't seen him in concert, so I can't comment on his music. I don't know if he has seen me in concert, so I don't know how he can comment on my poetry. But man, we have to respect each other's genre of music and move forward."

Jay-Z plays Live at the Marquee in Cork on June 25; RDS, Simmonscourt on June 26; tickets €65.70 from Ticketmaster: 0818 719 300. He also plays Glastonbury on June 28