Rapper turned entrepreneur Jay-Z and billionaire investor Warren Buffett cover “400 Richest People In The World” Issue of Forbes Magazine. The duo sat down with Steve Forbes to discuss their success, business, and tips on making money. View the video below:
It's one thing to be on a Forbes list and it's another to cover their magazine. Check out Jay-Z sharing the cover of Forbes with billionaire investor Warren Buffett! The two icons had an hour-long interview with Steve Forbes at Buffett's office building in Omaha, Nebraska to discuss wealth, social obligations, how luck played into their success, and so much more.
There's a lot of gems in this interview. Get acquainted with this super-duper dope material if you're on a quest to take over the world. Scroll down to see their cover. Below are excerpts from their conversation:
Steve Forbes: Jay, where you grew up, you could have easily ended up being put away.
Jay-Z: Yeah. There are very few people from my neighborhood that make it out. Forget about being successful, I mean making it out alive or just incarcerated. I have a great friend who just came home, one of the most beautiful people you’d ever meet; he just came home from doing 13 years. And we were together every single day. Back then there was a guy by the name of Jazz who I started out with. He had a deal with EMI. He had the opportunity to go to London to record his album. I went along with him for two months. In those two months there was a sting operation and they took my friend I’m talking about, for 13 years. The only reason I wasn’t there was because I was away doing this music stuff. Had it not been for music, and music taking me out at the right time, my life could very easily have been his, very easily.
SF: Jay, how are you going to survive in a business where the old rules are no longer true?
JZ: There was a time in music where a hit solved everything. That’s no longer true. I think the music business is still stuck in that place because we haven’t figured it out. One of the biggest things in business is to open yourself up for change. We don’t have to change who we are, we have to change the way we go about it.
At Roc Nation we’re taking our time with artist development, but there are many parts of the business that we’re in. For a long time, music labels weren’t into touring and now they’re making up these 360 deals [where labels get a piece of everything: albums, tours, merchandise]. I don’t want this to be a record-company-bashing thing but this whole 360 model is not what the record company does. The record company is not in the touring business. So why would an artist sign with you when that’s not your area of expertise? We’re with the biggest concert promoter there is, and there’s just so many different aspects we’re into to make ourselves successful: touring, producing, publishing, clothing, movies.
Warren Buffett: I don’t want to compete with him, Steve. I’m not interested.
SF: Jay, you’re also wise enough, or big enough, where you don’t mind sharing billing with Eminem or Bono.
JZ: It’s fun for me, for one thing. I don’t have that ego where I have to be the only guy on the bill. I’m cool with going out with other artists. I’ve been doing it my entire career. Before Eminem, before Bono, it was R. Kelly or 50 Cent or DMX. I just believe in giving people a better package so when they leave the concert hall, they want to come back again. A lot of people make that mistake when they’re hot. They just sell off the name and sell off the moment. We’re over-delivering on the experience.
SF: Didn’t you end up paying $5 million to buy your last album from Def Jam?
JZ: I have a better story for you. The year I went over to create Roc Nation with Live Nation, I still had one album left to make with Def Jam. L.A. Reid, the chairman of Def Jam at the time, did a great thing for me. He allowed me to walk in and have the conversation with [chairman of parent company Universal Music Group] Doug Morris. We had a fantastic relationship. So it was very cool. I bought my last album back. What people don’t know is the day before I flew from Hawaii, where I was doing some recording and put it on an iPod. I had on jogging pants, and my iPod, with all the music I recorded, was missing. It was on the plane somewhere. I had to walk into Doug’s office the next day and buy an album back that might leak the next day. Every day I would wake up and check all the Internet places and everywhere. I was like that for three months.
But it was worth it, you know. I was heading in a different direction and needed that freedom. It was a great decision for the company. They got some money. And a great decision for me. I got a very successful album, Blueprint 3, which had “Empire State of Mind” on it. That sold about 4 million singles itself. And my first solo number-one single came off that. I believe in everything lining up.
SF: Warren, you said you wouldn't want to compete with Jay. What advice would you give?
JZ: He's super-duper joking.
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