BY NDSMITH • SEPTEMBER 3, 2019

It seems that there is a big difference between JAY-Z the rapper and Shawn Carter, the kid from Marcy Projects.

And within that space between those two realities, a philosophy of what causes police brutality from the RocNation head honcho as emerged. Depending on who you ask, this mindset is the undercurrent of his new controversial and complicatedly secret partnership with the National Football League. It is also why so many people jump on the video where he seems to be victim blaming, while offering up a reason why young people from single-parent households don’t respect authority and how that lack of respect yields the violence perpetrated against poor Black and Brown people in our country’s urban jungles.

In several videos that have recently surfaced, JAY-Z is on a panel discussing race relations with New England Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft and CNN’s Van Jones. Therein the conversation he says that youth (from single-households and without father’s there) are angry and buck the system, which opens them up to exchanges with the police- that sometimes ends tragically.