“I’m like Ché Guevara with bling on, I’m complex…”
Jay-Z, photographed for the December issue of XXL magazine by Jonathan Mannion in 2002. The issue was titled as “The Big Bu$iness Issue” and Hov and the Roc were crowned as “Untouchable.”
As well as three Roc-A-Fella Records chains, Hov is wearing a shirt t-featuring a famous photograph of the Argentine Marxist revolutionary
taken by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda. Popularly known as “Guerrillero Heroico,” the photograph was captured on March 5, 1960—less than 18 months after Cuba had been established as a communist state by Fidel Castro following five years of conflict.
A year earlier during his “MTV Unplugged” taping Jay had worn a white long-sleeve shirt with a photograph of Guevara—as well as a small Rocawear logo chain. The act drew criticism, with some saying it juxtaposed two philosophies as the South American freedom fighter wouldn’t have agreed with Hov’s diamond chain. He didn’t take the criticism to heart, as on “The Bounce” in 2002 he would name himself “a revolutionary Jay Guevara.”
In November 2003 Jay hosted an early Black Album listening session for The Village Voice. That day
Hov wore another Ché-inspired piece.
Writer Elizabeth Mendez Berry was sent to interview him, and during the session she directly queried the rapper on his style choices. He recalled this interaction in Decoded in 2010: “I’m still a guarded person when I’m not in the booth or onstage or with my oldest friends, and I’m particularly wary of the media. Part of the pre-release promotion for the album was a listening session in the studio with a reporter from The Village Voice, a young writer named Elizabeth Mendez Berry. I was playing the album unfinished; I felt like it needed maybe two more songs to be complete. After we listened to the album the reporter came up to me and said the strangest thing: ‘You don’t feel funny?’ I was like, ‘Huh?’ I knew she meant funny as in weird, and I was thinking, ‘Actually, I feel real comfortable; this is one of the best albums of my career…’ But then she said it again: ‘You don’t feel funny? You’re wearing that Ché T-shirt and you have…’ She gestured dramatically at the chain around my neck. ‘I couldn’t even concentrate on the music,’ she said. ‘All I could think of is that big chain bouncing off of Ché’s forehead’ … This wasn’t the first time I’d worn a Ché shirt—I’d worn a different one during my taping of an MTV Unplugged show, which I’d taped with the Roots. I didn’t really think much of it. Her question caught me off guard and I didn’t have an answer for her.”
Before the writer left she gave Jay a copy of a VERY critical essay she wrote about him for a book about classic albums, with her piece covering Reasonable Doubt, Vol. 3 … Life and Times of S. Carter and The Blueprint. He read it that night. Referencing his “Unplugged” session, she had written that “when he rocks his Guevara shirt and a do-rag, squint and you see a revolutionary. But open your eyes to the platinum chain around his neck: Jay-Z is a hustler.” Much of the essay focused on how she believed he had overestimated his influence on the world—and that he was simply a [gifted] hustler willing to change his persona to sell products.
The next day Just Blaze had a stroke of creative genius and would run across New York City to Baseline Studios to play Hov a fresh instrumental. That beat was “Public Service Announcement.” It immediately resonated with the rapper. He delayed the album’s mastering and spit two quick freestyles. After completing his PSA, Jay rang Mendez Berry and invited her to the studio to hear the track she had inspired, telling her he had appreciated her blunt honesty.
This, from Decoded: “The second verse for “Public Service Announcement” was almost entirely unrelated to the first verse. I wrote the second verse as a response to the journalist. When someone asked me at the time of the ‘Unplugged’ show why it was that I wore the Ché
T-shirt, I think I said something glib like, ‘I consider myself a revolutionary because I’m a self-made millionaire in a racist society.’ But it was really that it just felt right to me. I knew that people would have questions. Some people in the hip-hop world were surprised by it. There are rappers like Public Enemy and dead prez who’ve always been explicitly revolutionary, but I wasn’t one of them. I also wasn’t a Marxist like Ché —the platinum Jesus piece made that pretty clear. Later I would read more about Guevara and discover similarities in our lives. I related to him as a kid who had asthma and played sports. I related to the power of his image, too. The image on the T-shirt had a name: Guerrillero Heroico, heroic guerrilla. The photo was taken after the Cuban Revolution and by the time I wore the T-shirt, it was probably one of the most famous photographs in the world. Like a lot of people who stumble across the image with no context, I was still struck by its power and charisma. The journalist was right, though. Images aren’t everything, and a t-shirt doesn’t change who you are. Like I said in the song ‘Blueprint 2,’ cause the nigga wear a kufi, it don’t mean that he bright. For any image or symbol or creative act to mean something, it has to touch something deeper, connect to something true. I know that the spirit of struggle and insurgency was woven into the lives of the people I grew up with in Bed-Stuy, even if in sometimes fucked up and corrupted ways. Ché’s failures were bloody and his contradictions frustrating. But to have contradictions—especially when you’re fighting for your life—is human, and to wear the Ché shirt and the platinum and diamonds together is honest. In the end I wore it because I meant it.”
AintNoJigga 