Jay-Z has F-you money. Is he saying it to the wrong people?

Jay-Z at Yankee Stadium

0:00Hey, Parker here. Just letting you know that Code Switch drops on Tuesdays and Fridays now. And just a heads up, we've got some salty language ahead. Alright, on to the show.

0:15Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch from NPR. I'm B.A. Parker. And I'm Gene Demby. Gene, I'm sure you've heard all about the three shows Jay-Z had in July at Yankee Stadium. Oh yeah, a bunch of my friends went. They were posting pictures on IG, getting their lives. Obviously, lots of videos of Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Pharrell, Rihanna, all the people who showed up to be on stage with him. It was massive. Big deal. I know, a couple of my cousins went too. But there was this moment that started making the rounds that really stood out afterwards.

0:51It was a freestyle that Jay-Z did on the first night. They say I sold out. Yeah, I did sell out. Three nights, I sold Yankee Stadium and hell out.

1:03He's been criticized for selling a 30th anniversary vinyl exclusively at Target. Yeah, Target, a place that a lot of people, particularly lots of black people right now, are boycotting. Correct. And this freestyle was Jay-Z's response to that criticism. Now, I'm a target. Hey, don't miss that target. No exclusive. They only doing what Apple World Market.

1:31You shopping at Amazon or you boycotting. You posting on Instagram, that's meta, boy. Stop it. Y'all know Google? On YouTube. You picking and choosing a politician as usual. And Jay-Z does this a lot, right? He compares himself to a corporation. Like, I'm not a business, man. I'm a business, man. He does it a lot, right? He's talking as if, you know, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, baby. So you might as well buy my record at Target. But, like, there seems to be this disconnect between who he is and who he's talking to.

2:04Like, the people who saved up for months to be able to afford to go to the concert at Yankee Stadium are somehow being shamed for having expectations as consumers. Meanwhile, they're all cheering while hearing this. Jay is beloved, obviously, right? And that whole Horatio Alder thing in his mythos, right? The drug dealer who pulled himself up by the bootstraps, air quotes strongly implied, in the rap game to become a millionaire.

2:34That's a big part of his appeal, right? Why people see him as, like, a sage who, like, conquered capitalism or whatever it is. Look, I know, I know. He even raps about that in the freestyle. Ex-drug dealer, you might not like the packaging, but my presence is a present and my gift is rapid. The man revels in these contradictions, right? Right, right, right. Like, I'm Shea Govera with Blingo. You know what I mean? That's the way he moves, right? And it's like he's almost goading the rest of us to do the messy work of trying to reconcile and wrestle with his mythology.

3:12So I reached out to two people who have also been sitting with this. Joel Anderson, reporter at The Ringer and host of the podcast The Press Box, and Christiana Mbakwe Medina, who makes the newsletter and podcast Pop Syllabus. They say that this is what Jay-Z has been selling the whole time. It's how Black excellence and Black capitalism get fed to us as the same thing.

3:47I'm talking about Jay-Z and capitalism with Joel Anderson and Christiana Mbakwe Medina.

The dinner thought experiment

3:55And Christiana started us out with a thought experiment. And there's always that very viral thought experiment. And forgive me if I get it a bit wrong. And it's like, do you take, is it $50,000 or dinner with Jay-Z, right? I think that's like the... $500,000 or yeah. Is it $500,000? There's something like, and so many people, they want the dinner with Jay-Z, right? Oh, really? Even though Jay-Z has said take the money, which is very interesting. But that's because there's this idea that if you have access to this type of person,

4:25that you can somehow transcend your circumstances. And I'm sure there's a class of celebrity that wants access to that room. Because they're like, I want to be in there. This will help my career. I have bills to pay. There are people I want to meet. And their alliance is more aspiring to be among the Jay-Z and Beyonce's than with the, you know, the hotel workers who are saying, we're kind of picketing for a fair and decent wage. Yeah, okay. This leads me to the freestyles that happened this past July

4:57that Jay-Z did at Yankee Stadium. Joel, how would you describe the freestyle that kind of went under scrutiny? Well, I mean, first of all, I didn't think it was a good freestyle, right? Oh my God, Joel. Yeah, I'm sorry. You're going to get us killed. It's okay. That's fine. That's fine. Joel said it, not me. Look, man, I'm a huge Jay-Z fan. I go, you know, from the first time I saw him on BET, that video, I've been a fan. I've bought all his albums.

5:27I've listened to all his music. So, like, you know, I feel like it's okay for me to say that wouldn't one to hit. But beyond that, the message of it was really regressive because he basically was elevating sellout culture. His argument is that we're all dirty, so why are y'all mad at me? We're all participating in capitalism. We're all trying to get ahead here. You guys are just mad at me because I've won. Yeah. I will say immediately it reminded me of his family feud rap.

6:03He's addressing, like, the old hits and being like, y'all acting brand new. He's like, Tupac ain't have a nose ring, too. He's tragically like, Tupac ain't have a nose ring, too. Like, he's empathizing with the younger generation in a way, but now he has become, like, the old hit who is, like, criticizing people for hoping that he has standards. Well, I mean, so, and I didn't come up with this, but I was listening to a podcast maybe a couple weeks ago, and somebody coined, he said that Jay-Z sort of killed the everyman in rap, right?

6:39And so if you go all the way back to the 90s, my love of hip-hop goes back to going to the mid-80s and Run DMC, LL Cool J, whatever, Fat Boys. And it was okay to be poor in hip-hop or to, like, just be a dude who was in the neighborhood, I lived next door to you, anything else. And Jay-Z comes along in 96, and it's like, hey, man, you know, what's the difference between a 4.0 and a 4.6? What's the difference between a 4.0 and a 4.6?

7:0930,000, 40,000 grand. Like, 30 to 40 grand. Beat it. That kind of stuff. Like, you know, you don't really mean anything if you don't have any money. You can't talk to me if you're not in this room, if you haven't sold as much as me. And so Jay-Z has always been sort of, like, talking like that and separating himself from the people that were his fans. And it encouraged a lot of other rappers to come along with him. If anything, I think that's the way that he has moved culture over the last generation, where it's just like, it's not okay to be a poor rapper anymore or to relate to your fans.

7:42And so he's just kind of used to talking down to the rest of us. Like, that is just the way that he started off talking like that, and it hasn't stopped over the last 30 years. And, I mean, I would argue that that's why people like him. Like, our people like to kind of be browbeaten, looked down on, spoken down to, adds a path to, we feel, being uplifted. It's this real dichotomy, right? It's the kind of, not even the pull up your bootstraps. But, I mean, that's probably how many of us were raised, like, kind of insulted into greatness, right?

8:16And so when Jay does that, when Jay says those things, it feels very familiar. It feels like he can say it. It is a kind of global black tradition of an elder who has ascended wagging fingers. And our people like it. That's the thing. I don't think we want to be gentle parented. And I do think there's something deeply American about the fact that, kind of, when you do ascend, you look down on people that aren't like you. But the people that you're looking down on want to be like you. We see it with the current president. The way he speaks to his base. The fact that he's just like, oh, my God, I can't sleep in these towns when I do these campaign trails.

8:50The food is so bad. I have to get my private jet back to New York or whatever it is. And it's, but they still love it. Because then they're like, I am actually engaging with an aspirational thing that is above me. And I think that Jay senses that about all of us. Well, yeah, it's kind of the belief that you can have control of your circumstances. He's challenging his fans to be like him. He's like, oh, I was in the Marcy Projects. I sold crack. And I made myself into a billionaire. And I'm in rooms with Barack Obama and Chris Martin and whoever else.

9:22And he's like, if I could do it, you could do it. Which is false. I mean, because you have to be one of the greatest rappers of all time to make that happen. And that's just not possible for a lot of people. But it is seductive. It is really seductive to believe that you can have control over your circumstances. And all of us want to believe that. And so, yeah, so Jay-Z plays on that. And people are loathe to criticize that because it's like, well, yeah, maybe we should be getting off our ass and pulling our pants up and stop naming our kids DeAndre. Yeah, and I think that's why the freestyles were kind of interesting for me because I think for a long time, both Jay-Z and Beyonce, and I'm a huge Beyonce fan, you know, they're a certain form of embodiment, right?

10:01And it was kind of unquestionable. And they've kind of built this very bulletproof brand where to question them or to critique them in any way is seen as equivalent of either at worst, you're a race traitor or you're a hater, right? That's kind of the spectrum in which any sort of Beyonce or Jay-Z critique exists. But I think there is a massive online subculture of people that really don't like Jay-Z and very vocal about it and go very viral, right? And I think, as Joel says, he's very attuned to that. He's very in the know. He's in the zeitgeist.

10:31And he feels bothered enough to feel he needs to respond to it. And I think he has a lot of discomfort with the fact that his legacy and his brand is being interrogated in real time. And there's always a discussion online about how, like, Gen Z just really don't care for Jay-Z at all. They think it's a very weird millennial Gen X. They're like, why do you like this guy? And there's lots of reasons for that. And I'm sure maybe that bothers him too, right? The fact that there isn't this mass adulation, I think he's grasping for that to remain.

11:01But I do think people are asking different questions of Jay-Z than they did perhaps 10 years ago. Does he need us to like him? I mean, you know, all these famous people are a bit weird. They do like to be worshipped more than like. There needs to be a base level of adoration for their currency to still be valuable. Yeah. I mean, you're putting yourself out there. But Jay-Z, I mean, throughout his career, and I can't really think of many other rappers that use their own name as hooks in the chorus, calls himself Hov, right?

11:34Which is a play on the Old Testament name for God, right? So like, you do want people to have adulation for you, to adore you, to be your face. So like, I mean, he's been cultivating that sort of fan base his entire career. And he still has a lot of that fan base. But like, as you all have pointed out, there's a lot of younger people that are like, you know, that dude's old. You know, that's kind of, those are whack raps. What do you all like about this guy? He's not Drake. You know what I mean? So, you know?

12:04You know what? Who is? Yeah, right, yeah. Who is? Yeah, right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, of course he wants to be liked. And because that's, I mean, you do that, you throw yourself your own 30th anniversary party. Like, he threw himself, he threw himself a 30th anniversary party in his hometown. So, yeah, surely he wants to be liked. Man, that's kind of sweet. It's dope. Yeah. When you do it, I would, like, that's dope. And to know that people, 150,000 people will show up over the course of three days to celebrate you and your career.

12:35That is dope. I totally get it.

Capitalism as freedom fighting

12:42An interesting thing that I was reading about in your article for The Ringer was you talked about how Jay compares himself to black revolutionaries. Yeah. And I'm so curious of, like, what does he get out of that? Well, it's a good way to rebut your critics, right? He thinks of black capitalism as freedom fighting. And there are a lot of people that believe that, right? Like, there's a lot, there's a grand old tradition of people thinking that if we own our own communities, we own businesses in our communities, that we can have freedom from white supremacy and white America.

13:21And he's even rapped about that before, about, like, I can't help the poor if I'm one of them. But you can't say you're Shea Guevara. You can't say you're Rosa Parks. You can't say you're Fred Hampton and be doing that because that's just not how they got down, right? But he wants this accrual of wealth to mean something. He wants it to be, like, the extension of the civil rights movement. And, again, I can see his argument that, you know what, it's going to be really difficult for me to do the things I want to do to help the people I want to do, work in the communities I want to, if I don't have financial freedom.

13:55But the argument, the rebuttal of that is that, actually, you work with white people all the time. And you work with the kind of white people that are not friends of the black community all the time. Like, stepping in and working with Roger Goodell in the NFL as they're burying Colin Kaepernick's career, burying his career because he had the temerity to speak up about police brutality of black people in this country, right? That's weird. School vouchers, basically taking money out of public schools. You've teamed up with people like that.

14:27Like, it's real tough to say that, you know, you can't say that you're Fred Hampton starting up a breakfast program for poor inner-city black kids when you're helping people that would take money out of inner-city schools, right? The thing is, when he hears people say black capitalists, he thinks of it as a slur. And so this is another way of him trying to sort of reimagine his role in society, where he's like, no, no, no, no, no. Actually, I've gotten people out of jail. I've done some important work, giving money to these charities, you know, after Katrina.

14:57I donated money there. But it's just a little bit more complicated than that. But he can say it and he does it because a lot of people eat that shit up. Yeah. And I do think, to kind of piggyback off what Joel says, I think this kind of moral capitalism that Jay speaks about, he genuinely believes it. I have people in my family that think that way because they're from that really old school way of thought of like, you know, keep your head down, work hard. If we do all of these things, we would ascend. Yep. Kind of like trickle-down black economics. Oh, boy.

15:28And about circulating the black pound or the black dollar, like whatever the currency is. So, you know, his way of thinking is, it's very mainstream in our communities. What has always been interesting to me about Jay, though, is that his kind of origin story really complicates that. Mm-hmm. So there's a certain type of like respectability politic that is like, this is the path, right? You go to a certain type of college and you do this and you do that and you definitely don't sell drugs. And I think that by preaching this moral capitalism, he's in a way trying to redeem himself by trying to be more establishment, by accruing the things that perhaps he couldn't because he didn't have access to them before.

16:09But then it just kind of further exposes the contradiction. You know, the interesting thing, though, is he's never apologized. It's not like he's ashamed of selling crack to people in his community, though. So that's another complicating factor. He's still ranting about it. I don't think it's a stretch to say that he's proud that he sold crack and that he was able to flip that into a record label, right? Into a rap career. So, yeah, to your point, like it does capitalize the idea of moral capitalism because maybe he doesn't think it's anything worth apologizing for. I think that's why he's like the quintessential kind of American titan, right?

16:43It's this idea that I did it so you don't have to. And so the next generation doesn't have to. Like, how do we clean up the money, clean up the legacy with each subsequent generation? And I think that's why he has aligned himself with the corporations he has because he's like mindful of that. He's mindful of kind of like the muddy origin story, but also that his task now is to kind of sanitize his legacy and further legitimize it. By aligning with power. And so I think he'd rather us focus on that than dwell on the past, which, again, I'd say is the case for so many of these storied families that we admire and also these entrepreneurs.

17:24And so he's just in a tradition and he's not unique in that way. And maybe that's why I, not that I don't have harsher critiques for him, but I think there is a systemic thing of he'd be like, well, what else was I going to do? I had to sell drugs. That was what was available to me. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but he perhaps would see him as product of a system and social conditions and being the person that was able to transcend it.

The pursuit of massive wealth

17:47I think we're kind of circling around this thing that I'm trying to process about, I think Jay-Z's public ethos has always been like that personal wealth is the ultimate form of black liberation, right? But it's never a collective liberation. But, like, how does that apply to Jay-Z or, you know, black artists, black people in power? Because I think about, I don't know how to say this tactfully. I thought the whole point of having, like, F you money was that you could say F you, but it seems like he's saying it to the wrong people.

18:24I actually think that, I think we need to flip the question in a way that it's not having more to lose. They believe they have more to accrue. Like, it's like, it's not enough, right? Because, and this is not even to be like, poor Jay-Z, woe is me. If we look at just the income inequality within the 0.1%, within the 1%, right? You know, we have a trillionaire.

18:54There are people with hundreds of billions of dollars. Like, what him and Beyonce have accrued is financially impressive, but it's a drop in the ocean compared to what's happening in Silicon Valley and across the globe right now. So I don't think they get there and think, oh, F you. They're like, oh, no, there's so much more money to get. And I think all of his kind of commercial moves recently have kind of reflected that, that, you know, I want to have billions upon billions rather than, say, F you to the system that has so far given me X billion.

19:26And I think that that seems to be the thinking more so than disrupting or pulling this thing apart. Well, that's absolutely right. So in the big interview that he gave with GQ at the beginning of the year, he talks about how he realized that there was a hotel that he stayed at with the former owner of the Brooklyn Nets, Mikhail Prokhorov. He's a, you know, a Russian oligarch, basically, billionaire many times over. And he said he went to this hotel and he realized that there was a room that Mikhail Prokhorov was staying at that he didn't even know existed.

19:59Right. And he was like, so at the end, he's like, you know, the future is having my own hotel. That's what he got. That's what he got. He's like, yo, I need more. I need more. Like, now I got to have the hotel. Like, that's the next thing. It's kind of hard to align yourself with the people that you perceive yourself as being a community with if that's sort of your approach to your life's work. Yeah. And also, I would say, I've had moments in my career, I'm like, if I get that thing, I'm going to be happy. If I earn that thing, I'm going to be happy. And then you get there and you're like, everything costs so much.

20:31You're like, wait, but wait. No, no, no. We have to remember the rooms that Jay-Z is in. He's around people with family money. So they're not even spending the money they're making. They're living off their trust. Right. And so that is actually very familiar. And that is the nature of this stage of capitalism that we're in. Right. Well, like, at this current stage of capitalism, why does it seem like Jay-Z's business deals keep arriving at the exact moment where consumers are taking a stand? Whether it's Target or NFL or, like, the casino in Times Square, things like that.

21:03If you're going to be really cynical, you know, there was within that Epstein Files database, there was this email from Jeff Staley. He was the former CEO of Barclays. And he wrote an email to Jeffrey Epstein. And he was talking about why in America you don't see sort of like the class revolt, that people aren't on the streets, you know, pissed off about their economic situation. And the email goes, you want to know why we are not Sao Paulo? Watch the TV ads on the Super Bowl. It's all about hip blacks and hip cars with white women.

21:35The group that should be in the streets has been bought off by Jay-Z. Okay. And so I would argue if you're being really cynical, people in industry, American Titans, they know that they've got an audience in Jay-Z, that they will hear them out in moments when things are going poorly for them. It just makes sense. The target probably was like, man, things are going really bad for us right now. I wonder if Jay-Z would be willing to do something with us. Right. And he brings a lot of people with him. So maybe that's too cynical. Right. But I would think that the people, the titans of industry, the people that benefit from this growing economic disparity, that they look to Jay-Z as sort of like an emissary for black folks.

22:16And they say, hmm, how can we get him on our side? Maybe he might be open to us. It seems like that's happened with the NFL. It seems like that happened with the voucher thing. It seemed like that happened with the cryptocurrency scam that he tried to run on Marcy Projects. And it seems like that happened with Target. So maybe I'm being unfair there, but to your point, Parker, the timing is amazing, isn't it? Well, okay. This is more of an existential question that you've talked about a little bit at the beginning of this conversation. I think because hip-hop was founded on these countercultural principles that embolden the voices of the disenfranchised.

22:54Mm-hmm. And Jay-Z, you said one hip-hop with this pulling himself up by his bootstraps and embodying the American dream, all this stuff. Has he fulfilled the dream of hip-hop by showing how far a black artist can go? Or has he just pulled the ladder up behind him by becoming the guy who defends the corporate structures that many of these black activists are fighting against?

Hip-hop and political shifts

23:20It depends on what era of hip-hop you're talking about. The hip-hop I grew up with was pro-black. It had pro-black politics. It was very community-oriented. It was embarrassing to sell out, right? To, like, plead for white adulation, white acceptance, Grammy Awards, talk about yourselves. Public Enemy didn't talk about, man, we went go. No, KRS-One wasn't concerned about getting brand deals, stuff like that, right?

23:50Those guys were really about, like, you know, even if their politics were a little incoherent, maybe you could argue misogynist, homophobic. A lot of that stuff didn't age very well, but at the heart of it, there was a lot of it that was pro-black, right? And you could argue, as we talked about earlier, that Jay-Z, Diddy, Kanye, some other folks really shifted the aims of hip-hop, right? Where it was about how much money you could accrue, how you could stunt on people, being in industries outside of hip-hop.

24:23And that legacy right there, if that's it, then Jay-Z has succeeded, yes. Because hip-hop has changed. It's like, what artists do you know of that is popular, or even not popular, that sit around and talk about pro-black politics, anti-Trump messages? Most of the hip-hop stars from our generation even now are, like, Trump-aligned, right? And so you can just sort of see this shift. You could even argue, as some people do, that this isn't even hip-hop anymore. The hip-hop that we grew up with, it was all these other elements, dancing, DJing, it was community-based, like parties and all this other stuff.

24:59That's not what hip-hop is today. Like, it's not, the organic hip-hop star really doesn't exist in quite the same way as it did anymore. So it could be that hip-hop has just already left us, and we don't know it yet. We haven't acknowledged it yet. Hip-hop turned 50 a couple years ago, right? And that's a long time for any genre of music. Like, things usually change, and, you know, a lot of people, and I'm one of those people that is convinced, or increasingly convinced, that hip-hop has left us. We don't own it anymore.

25:29Joel! I'm sorry. No! Joel's like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No! I still like a lot of rap music, you know what I'm saying? I mean, I'm still a fan of a lot of rappers, but it's just, you know, things are changing. This is now reminding me, I remember as a teenager, like, being introduced to, like, Did Prez, or, like, Immortal Technique. Bombed innocent people, trying to murder Saddam, when you gave them those chemical weapons to go to war with Iran. And I remember, there was a Immortal Technique, he called Condoleezza Rice Sally Hemings.

26:02Condoleezza Rice is just a new age Sally Hemings. I break it down with critical language and spiritual anguish, the Judas I hang with. And I was like, oh, we are like, you can't do that. Like, no one's doing that now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a conversation that's very vibrant and happening right now. You know, the biggest song of the summer is by Carisha, Spend That.

26:34Lots of people have a lot to say about that song, right? I mean, I love the song, I will say. So maybe I'm part of the problem. But, like, you know, people pointing to that as, like, the death of a genre. And not just the death of a genre, but, like, moral decay in a community. Which feels like the thing that they've always said about hip-hop, so maybe hip-hop is re-emerging. But, yeah, just the themes that people are speaking about is reflected in what Jay-Z embodies, really.

27:05Which is, like, this is how much money I have. Let me talk about it. Yeah. Yeah, it's just sad. I mean, guys, I mean, again, like, hip-hop gave me connection, man. It made me feel cool. It made me feel powerful. It made me think about the brothers and sisters in Atlanta and New York and L.A. and Memphis and New Orleans. You could see that we were all sort of in the same struggle. Like, a lot of rappers would talk about police brutality. They'd talk about poverty. They'd talk about, you know, trying to take down the system, not join it.

27:36Right? That's not what's going on right now. And I'm almost 50 years old myself, and either I can fret about that and mourn the loss of hip-hop or just acknowledge that that's what it is and wait for whatever the next thing is going to be. I believe that Jay-Z is an avatar of how we feel about ourselves, our hopes, our dreams, and desires. And that when we think about him, and whatever we do feel about Jay-Z, because there's some people that will listen to this and completely disagree with everything we've said.

28:13There's some people who will agree. I think it's less about Jay-Z and more about our own personal lived experience, particularly for Black people in community with other Black people. And I think the areas about Jay-Z that are the most fraught are the areas that are most fraught within ourselves. We see ourselves in him. We see there's things we wish he would have done, right? And so I think that's how we should talk about Jay-Z is really as an avatar and what less about him and what he makes us feel about ourselves and what we project about him.

28:45And I think that's a really interesting place to come to it because sometimes I'm like, oh, we're talking past each other because we're not talking about Jay-Z. We're talking about each other. That's right. Well, yeah, we're always talking about each other. And I would say, I also want to make this clear that I am a big fan of Jay-Z, the artist. He is a phenomenal artist, and I would never want that to be overlooked. He deserves everything that he ever got for his art, okay? But the issue is that he's asking us to say, you can't knock the hustle, right?

29:18And I'm sorry. Like, I just, I feel like I can. You know? Like, I'm looking at the world around me, and I'm looking at the people that you're aligning with, right? And that what the rest of us have to deal with in this world. And I can say, you know what? I expected more. It doesn't mean that I think he's a bad person, that he's personally let me down. But I can just say, you know, given the hip-hop I grew up with, the heroes in our community that we used to have, I expected more.

29:49And if he can't live up to that, that's my problem, not his. We're allowed to be disappointed in Jay-Z. Yeah. Yeah. It's complicated, and we're allowed to be proud. I feel proud. I will say, like, I was on the subway today, and on my shuffle, Jay-Z say hello came on. And I felt like a boss walking, like, say hello to the bad guy, I'm the bad guy.

30:16I come from the bottom, the mad fly. Like, yeah, this is great.

30:23All right. Christiana, Jewel, thank you so much. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. This was so great. I had such a good time. Yeah, it was a pleasure. Anytime.

Credits and closing remarks

30:35We reached out to Jay-Z for comment, but did not hear back. And that's our show. You can follow us on Instagram at NPR Code Switch. This episode was produced by Christina Kala. It was edited by Courtney Stein. And a big shout-out to the rest of the Code Switch Massive. Xavier Lopez, Jess Kung, Leah Dinella, Dalia Mortada, Barton Girdwood, Yolanda Sanguini, and Maya Dangerfield. As for me, I'm B.A. Parker. I'm Gene Demby. BZL. Hydrate.