You’re Not The Only One Who Thinks Jay Z Is An Industry Plant

Ogbonna Hagins Philly Word Magazine 2.0

Jay-Z the Billionaire: Owner or Operative?

Here’s the real question:
Is Jay-Z actually a mogul—or just the most famous middleman white capital ever hired?

Let’s break it down:

Armand de Brignac & D’Ussé? Minority stakes, sold off to white conglomerates.

Brooklyn Nets? Less than 1% ownership—used as a PR piece.

TIDAL? Bought from Europeans, sold to Jack Dorsey. A quick flip—not real power.

NFL deal? Corporate cleanup optics—not structural change.

Times Square casino? Jay-Z doesn’t have the billions for that. He’s part of a white-led group. He’s the face, not the financier.

Jay-Z is in the room, but he’s not in control.
He’s the so-called Black cover used to sell deals to the public, while the real bag moves behind closed doors.

He’s not the landlord—he’s the decorated doorman.

So Has He Really Won?

If “winning” means:

Personal wealth,

Being in elite circles,

Controlling how your story gets told…

Then yes, Jay-Z won—for himself.

But if winning means:

Uplifting the people you came from,

Teaching Freedmen how to build wealth systems,

Breaking the cycle of cultural exploitation…

Then he hasn’t won at all.
Because nothing was built for us—and nothing was handed down.

The Real Takeaway: The Game Behind the Game

This isn’t hate—it’s truth.

Jay-Z didn’t just take from Philly—he took from a Freedmen cultural source and handed it to a white power structure that never planned to empower anyone but itself. He didn’t rob them. He used them—just like he’s now being used by billion-dollar interests that need a so-called Black face to sell their next venture.

He’s not the first. Won’t be the last.
This is the game: So-called Black kings paraded in front of thrones they’ll never sit on.

So the question becomes:

Can a so-called Black face in a white-run empire ever hold true power?
Or is it just the illusion of ownership—while the real decisions get made upstairs?

Philly deserves credit. The culture deserves truth.
Jay-Z didn’t build the blueprint—he took it from those who did.

And beneath it all is a deeper betrayal—constitutional and generational.
The contracts that bound these Philly artists—these Freedmen—to systems that profited off their pain and story weren’t just predatory. They were badges of slavery, prohibited under the 13th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment promised equal protection—but when Freedmen are disproportionately targeted by exploitative contracts, stripped of ownership, and locked out of institutional capital, that promise is actively violated.

If the federal government had fulfilled the promise of the 13th Amendment—land, protection, and real freedom—these artists might have negotiated from a place of power, not desperation. This entire story, this pattern of cultural theft and economic betrayal, shouldn’t even exist.

But it does.
Because the promise was broken.
And this story is one more badge of slavery, still stitched into the fabric of America’s biggest industries.

Follow