After a years-long debacle on social media about whether to have lunch with Jay-Z or take $500,000, the rapper finally weighs in.
In a conversation with CBS Today, the rapper spoke with Gail King and settled the score.
“You gotta take the money,” he said. “What I’mma say?”
King explained that many fans online have expressed their interest in taking the lunch because the wisdom that he’d give would be able to make them that amount of money or more. Jay-Z said that not the smartest way to go about it.
“You got all that in the music for $10.99. That’s a bad deal. I wouldn’t tell you to cut a bad deal,” he explained. “Take the $500,000, go buy some albums and listen to the albums. It’s all there.”
Although this topic has been around for several years, with its origins still unable to be pinpointed, it recently came back as a popular conversation. Last week, a video surfaced of a fan who stopped Jay-Z at the Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Chargers game to admit that he would take the money instead of the meal. The rapper laughed off the comment.
“If you piece it together and really listen to the music for the words, for what it is, it’s all there. Everything that I said was going to happen, happened. Everything that I said I wanted to do, I’ve done, and there’s the blueprint,” he added, referencing the title of his iconic 2001 album. “The blueprint — literally — to me and my life and my journey is there already.”