November 30, 2007
Dollar bills are set to start appearing on shelves at your local Dollar Tree, in rolls of four, as the next uncomfortable single-ply toilet paper.
Since the American dollar has slowly become the new Mexican peso, its not just Ahmadinejad and OPEC dismissing its value, as rappers are taking notice too.
Pay attention as you watch the catchy new music video from the mega-star rapster Jay-Z, "Blue Magic", and see if you can't spot the product placement. It is not a fancy car that he is endorsing – although both his rides, a Rolls- Royce and soft-top Bentley, are plenty spiffy – but rather a currency – and it is not the dollar.
Like so many in the hip-hop genre, the song is a celebration of ostentatious wealth. But capturing the attention of commentators in this clip, shot in the glimmering, neon-lit canyons of New York City, are the repeated glimpses of flickering wads of €500 notes. Jay-Z has thus performed a currency defection: the dollar is not just down, it is out. The euro is the new bling.
It is only a music video, but Jay-Z, whose influence on pop culture is immense, may, wittingly or otherwise, be bringing America to what some pundits call the "point of recognition" – the moment when the droop of the dollar against other currencies ceases to be the preoccupation only of economists and American tourists in Paris, and enters the popular zeitgeist as a new and unsettling reality. Read on
Proof that rappers don't just keep their ears to the streets but to global economics as well.
Obama, when you get elected President, get at Hov for that Federal Reserve Chairman appointment.
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