Your Favorite Rapper is Poor: Advice From Jay-Z (Video Interview)

When I first started "Your Favorite Rapper is Poor" I never thought it'd become as popular as it has. Now that's it's become so popular I'm working on taking you even deeper behind the scenes of hip-hop's business world with exclusive interviews with artists, producers, managers, label owners and more (coming soon). Unfortunately for some reason Jay-Z hasn't been returning my calls, but luckily he sat down for an interview alongside Warren Buffet, the investment genius who's the second richest man in America (he's worth $50 billion), for Forbes Magazine which anyone looking to follow in his financially astute footsteps can learn from.

While it's strange to see Hova sitting next to two of the whitest men on the planet, some gems of wisdom do get dispensed. For those who don't want to watch the entire interview, which frankly gets a little boring at times, I've distilled Jay and Buffet's wisdom below.



Jay on Almost Leaking "Blueprint 3": Complete side story, but fascinating. After spending a crap ton of money (multiple millions) buying the rights for "Blueprint 3" from Def Jam so he could release it on his own, newly formed Roc Nation label, Jay lost his iPod containing the entire album on a flight back from a recording session. Every day for the next three months, until the album dropped, he woke up in a cold sweat, terrified that someone had found the iPod and leaked the album, which would have been a double kick in the balls because now, as the rights owner, he would have had to directly eat the lost profits from the leak. I bet some middle aged white woman found it, kept it, and deleted all of that "noisy rap music" that was on it. Crazy story.

Warren on Haters: "You don't need a high IQ [to be successful]. What you do need is emotional stability. You need to be able to think independetly, and when you come to a conclusion, you really have to not care what other people say. Just follow the facts, and follow your reasoning. That's tough for a lot of people." Ok, so Buffet didn't actually use the word "hater", but it's the same concept.

Jay on 360 Deals - To paraphrase, record labels aren't touring companies, so why should an artist entrust them to run their tour? As long as someone's going to be taking a percentage of the tour profits, it might as well be a company that specializes in tours and can do a much better job. Of course, it's important to note that Jay's apparently not against 360 deals, just 360 deals with labels other than Roc Nation (Roc Nation is a partner with Live Nation, the country's most powerful touring company). Hova's one hell of a salesman.

Warren & Jay on Longevity: As Jay says repeatedly, and Warren backs, don't fall in love with shiny things, meaning don't hop on every new trend. Take a long term perspective and realize that by focusing on making quality music that will stand the test of time your career will also stand the test of time. In other words, there's a reason you didn't hear Jay use auto-tune and collab with Soulja Boy.

Jay on Free Downloads: Hova says the music industry fucked up when it tried to shut down Napster. Because they couldn't admit that their business model - selling high priced albums and singles at huge profits - had fundamentally changed, they tried to shut down Napster instead of working with it and controlling it. By crushing Napster all the music industry did was create a thousand smaller file sharing sites that are now completely impossible to control.

Jay on Diversification: The days of dropping a hit record and being set for life are over. An artist needs to diversify and not rely solely on their music to make them rich. That means getting involved in their own touring, placing their music in tv shows and movies, controlling publishing rights, working with established brands, etc. etc.