The Significance of Jay Z on “Pop Style”

Earlier today, Drake surprised fans with the release of two new songs, “One Dance” and “Pop Style”. Both from his highly anticipated new album Views From The 6. However, this time Drake brought along two prestigious guests to make special appearances.

The second song released, “Pop Style”, names the artists as Drake featuring The Throne. And to no ones surprise, both Jay Z and Kanye West made an appearance. The name comes from the album Jay Z and Kanye West released together in 2011, Watch The Throne. Surprisingly, though all three artists have worked together in the past, “Pop Style” marked the trio’s first collaboration on a single.

But though the song is catchy and a good listen, there was something in the song that stood out to me: the meaning behind Jay Z’s short cameo.

The total of Jay Z’s contribution to the song came in the form of two lines:

“They still out to get me, they don’t get it. I cannot be gotten, that’s a given”

Once my initial disappointment of not hearing a proper sixteen from Jay Z wore off, something like curiosity kicked in. Why only two sentences? Why, given his recent media silence did he suddenly appear and say so little? See, Jay Z is a famously calculated individual when it comes to business. Add that to the fact he is a master word-smith who utilizes double entendres, metaphors, similes, analogies, and word play as a profession. And one begins to question the motives of such a move. Often the real meaning of Jay Z’s work has been the meaning between his lines or the things he’s left unsaid.

Now of course inferring meaning is always tricky. But if the English department at colleges can do it with books from dead authors, I feel a little harmless analysis won’t hurt.

In my opinion?

His two sentences serve as a concise rebuff to those who have criticized and mocked his music streaming service, Tidal. The company, which had until just recently failed to recover following the backlash it received following its Avengers style launch in April of 2015.

The entire time, Jay Z has stayed silent as media outlets and pundits questioned Tidal’s viability. At the B Sides concert last May, Jay Z did a live freestyle to express some of his frustrations against what he considered unfair negative media coverage. He made comparisons with institutional companies such as Spotify, Apple, Nike, YouTube, and how even their profitability took time to reach.

His gripes were that he was a target, but somehow these companies were not.

Then slowly Tidal began to gain some traction with users. They hit 1 million subscribers in the Fall of 2015, and celebrated it with a big show in Brooklyn called the Tidal x 1020 show.

And now, the service has coming roaring back. With great help from Kanye West, who released his new album The Life of Pablo only for streaming on Tidal, an act that netted the company a shocking two million new subscribers, bringing the companies total to 3 million subscribers across 46 different countries.

In that period Tidal shot to the number #1 app on the iPhone App Store. Kanye’s album streamed over 250 million times in just 10 days, and was even pirated over half a million times on Pirate Bay.

Also, Jay Z allegedly hit the previous owners of Tidal with a lawsuit for $15 million. His claims are that they were not transparent in their true subscriber number before the sale. And that the real subscriber count was well below what Aspiro stated. If these allegations are true it could mean that Jay Z gets back almost 27% of his original investment. That would make the the investment in Tidal that Jay Z made seem much more reasonable.

Then there was the news at the end of February where reports were that Samsung, Spotify, and Google were in talks to buy Tidal. Nothing came of the rumors, and Samsung specified they were not interested. But it wouldn’t be unreasonable to see a company like Samsung in the future acquire the company. Much in the same way that Apple acquired Beats radio for $3 Billion.

And it even seems like Jay Z might be looking to diversify its offerings. There are reports that Tidal is working with major people in the movie industry to create a movie streaming service. That would put it in competition with Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. And with their roster it makes it possible to have original programming by the likes of Madonna or Beyonce. So do not be surprised if Tidal stops getting seen as a music streaming service, and more so as a content hub.

Now the future of Tidal and Jay Z is of course still yet to be determined. But if history has shown us something, it’s that Jay Z is not a bad businessman (See, his record. i.e., Roc-A-Fella Records, Rocawear, President of Def Jam, Great Gatsby composer, the face of the move and launch of the Brooklyn Nets)

You get the point.

Maybe he wants to keep the Tidal going to turn it into a multi-billion dollar company. Or maybe he took a cue from the tech world, and decided to scale and sell.

Only Jay Z and his closest associates know that though.

But whether you agree or not, Jay Z has a message for you:

He just cannot be gotten.

But apparently you don’t get it.