JAY-Z’s critically acclaimed 4:44 — one of HipHopDX’s Best Rap Albums of 2017 — was a career revelation, displaying the clarity he’s gained as a father and husband. However, as shown in the new book The Wake Up Call: Financial Inspiration Learned from 4:44 + A Step by Step Guide on How to Implement Each Financial Principle, the album is much more than that.
Author, radio host, personal finance expert and celebrity life coach Ash Exantus — better known as Ash Cash — decoded the plethora of financial jewels within the album and created a step-by-step blueprint for building and leveraging credit, starting a business, investing money wisely and much more.
“My inspiration for the book was that JAY was giving so much knowledge about how you can become financially free … as an individual as well as how we (as a culture) can break the cycle of poverty in our community,” Cash explained to HipHopDX. “Because some of the concepts may be new to some of us, I wanted to expound more on the blueprint that JAY gave us (pun intended). In essence, JAY gave us the ‘what.’ My goal with the book was to give the ‘how.'”
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As the author explained, Hip Hop — as a platform — has always been a teaching tool from its inception, especially as it relates to financial health.
“Busta Rhymes was telling us to ‘floss a little, invest up in a mutual fund’ and Quavo is telling us how to invest our money wisely when he says, ‘You get the bag and fumble it, I get the bag and flip it and tumble it,'” Cash notes. “Our music can take a serious and scary topic like finance and help us to learn the lessons we were never taught.”
In the words of Mr. Shawn Carter, “Fuck rich! Let’s get wealthy! Who else gon’ feed we,” Cash says.
The Wake Up Call: Financial Inspiration Learned from 4:44 + A Step by Step Guide on How to Implement Each Financial Principle is available here.
