A friendly debate erupted on Twitter earlier this week that had Hip Hop fans choosing between a dinner with JAY-Z or $500,000. Par for the course, the responses were mixed. Some Hov fans got really deep about their belief one dinner with the Roc Nation mogul would give them the blueprint (no pun intended) to billionaire status.
As one confident fan wrote, “I’ll explain since most can’t comprehend. Dinner with Jay-Z is the better option over $500K because of the knowledge & expertise he has. He’ll give you the blueprint on being wealthy and successful. His knowledge will be worth more long term than the short term $500K.”
Others begged to differ. With a healthy dose of sarcasm, another person replied, “‘Jay-Z, how do I become rich like you?’ ‘Well, when I was young, I was given the choice between $500k and dinner with a famous musician. Obviously I went with the $500k.'”
But Hov’s streaming company TIDAL quickly settled the debate with a simple tweet: “Take the $500K.” The message arrived on Wednesday night (September 8) as the topic began to trend on Twitter — and it wasn’t the first time either. In 2018, the same question was posed, although the sum was only $50,000 at the time.
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JAY-Z’s rise from Brooklyn street hustler to billionaire executive is nothing short of inspiring. In March, Forbes reported his net worth jumped 40 percent after he sold TIDAL and the champagne brand Armand de Brignac, leading to a net worth of $1.4 billion. But his lunch conversations with famed investor Warren Buffett did prove to be helpful.
In 2010, JAY-Z flew to Buffett’s home turf of Omaha, Nebraska where they spent time together talking about their individual business ethos.
“As I was listening to Warren, I could just hear all the similarities and all the things in what he’s saying, right?” JAY-Z said at the time. “Because if you don’t look at the tickers, you’re really just searching for the truth within all the numbers and all the chaos. And that’s the key to being a recording artist. You’re telling your story or finding your truth at the moment.
“My story’s a little opposite from Warren because I started a little later. My first album didn’t come out until I was 26, so I had a bit more maturity. The album had all these emotions and complexities and layers that a typical Hip Hop album didn’t have if you were making it at 16, 17 years old. That isn’t enough wealth of experience to share with the world. I had so much wealth to share with the world at that time, and I’ve never forgotten those things, like you say. You never forget those true things that you stick to, your basic things that make you successful.”
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Both Buffett and JAY-Z agreed part of the secret to success was having passion for what they do. As Buffett explained, “Jay said it perfectly when he talked about how he’s in there recording for himself, and the money comes afterwards.
“I gotta do what I love, and it doesn’t get any luckier than that. I would be doing what I do now and I would’ve done it in the past if the payoff had been in seashells, or sharks’ teeth, or anything else.”
So take the $500,000, invest and maybe one day that fortune will grow.
