Jay Z

Names like The Rothschild´s, Medici and Astor carry a cache representative of domineering success not only influencing conventional culture but even popular culture. In 1996 two inner city teenagers announced their intentions by naming their business after a man who had been born nearly two hundred years ago. That business was “Roc-A-Fella Records” (after John D Rockefeller).

It was launched from the boot of a car. Apart from its clever play on words (they were in the music business) the name chosen represented “thinking big,” and megalomaniac intentions. John D Rockefeller is one of those iconic entrepreneurs that helped give America her self-confidence. He reinforced in American a sense of economic and entrepreneurial might.

Damon Dash and Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter understood the devil-may-care attitude so prevalent in the USA and ran with it. They now dominate their genre amassing hundreds of millions of dollars to boot.

However, the two have never stopped with the entrepreneurial adventures. STUART ELLIOTT published an article on February 8 2008 reporting, Grammy-winning rapper Jay Z , (club owner, a clothier, hotelier, basketball team owner) linking up with Steve Stoute, to open Translation Advertising. Their aim? To help marketers reach multicultural consumers, is the answer. Client list include mainstream advertisers like General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, McDonald’s and Reebok.

Stoute, sold Translation Consultation last for an estimated $10 million to $15 million to the Interpublic Group of Companies. Interpublic, the third-largest agency company (behind the Omnicom Group and the WPP Group). Interpublic will own 49 percent of Translation Advertising. The majority stake will be owned by Mr. Stoute, 37, and Jay-Z, 38, who will be the co-chairmen.

The deal is driven by the growing African-American, Hispanic and Asian-American populations in the United States, accounting circa $2 trillion in consumer buying power.

"His-story” began in the Marcy Projects in Brooklyn. “He came from nothing and turned it into something before our eyes.” said Stoute. Bedford-Stuyvesant, more commonly known as Bed-Stuy, is a neighbourhood not long ago it was known as the largest ghetto in the US. Mary H. Monomi opened her 1973 book on Bed-Stuy asking: “Why would anyone want to live there?”

Jay Z lived in the housing estate in the deprived Bedford-Stuyvesant district. His early entrepreneurial involved some success a drug dealer. He simply hunted in an environment he was 'suit-able' to. When Hip Hop exploded into a billion dollar business he was again 'suited' to the terrain.

Richard Dawkins writes in his book The Selfish Gene “If we were told that a man had lived a long and prosperous life in the world of Chicago gangsters, we would be entitled to make some guesses as to the sort of man he was, We might expect that he would have qualities such as toughness, a quick trigger finger, and the ability to attract loyal friends. These would not be infallible deductions, but you can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered. Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes, early exp have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes…”

Dawkins, refers to the biological body as the ‘survival suit’. William D. Hamilton (generally referred to as Bill Hamilton 1936 – 2000) was a British evolutionary biologist and is recognised as one of the greatest evolutionary theorists of the 20^th Century. He became famous through his work on a gene-centric view of evolution. In essence he attempted to look at man’s development and behaviour from a gene eye level. Genes produce hosts either suitable or unsuitable to an environment to varying degrees. Suit borrows from Dawkins’ term survival-suit. A suit is a generic term and there are different types of suits. Sartorially we have business suits, Black Tie suits, a suit ‘suitable’ for a wedding and informal or casual suits. You also have a suit of armour, a wet suit and so forth. The many suits are all designed for specialist undertakings or environments. The suit you wear influences your chance of success in given environments. Think of a scuba diver dressed in a suit of armour or a jousting knight competing, dressed in scuba diving gear and the results are predictably disastrous. Or how about an eagle hunting on the surface of a river and the crocodile hunting by launching itself from nearby trees. All scenarios demonstrate ‘ill suitedness’ to compete in their chosen environment. But switch them around their probability of success increase immeasurably.

Dawkin’s Chicagoan gangster had genes that gave Jay Z a peculiar phenotype. As part of a ‘peculiar species’ he was in the right place (Bed-Stuy just like the late award winning artist and entrepreneur Christopher Wallace (May 21, 1972 – March 9, 1997).An aggressive, yet creative and innovative 'phenotype' gene at a particular point in time or history, may end up in a prison cell or running a large music label.

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