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It’s hard to imagine there’s any dinner that’s worth $500,000, but plenty of people on the internet would tell you it’d be worth forgoing that sum if you got the chance to share a table with Jay-Z. Thankfully, it appears the debate has been settled once and for all courtesy of the rapper himself.
Jay-Z burst onto the scene in the 1990s, as the Brooklyn native was one of the most prominent voices on the East Coast rap scene to fill the void that was created in the wake of the death of The Notorious B.I.G.
He was able to live a very comfortable lifestyle thanks to his music, but he used a good chunk of his income to create a flourishing business empire with a portfolio that included the 40/40 Club, Rocawear, Armand de Brignac (the champagne known as “Ace of Spades”), and Roc Nation Sports.
Those investments worked out pretty well for Jay-Z when you consider he currently has an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion, and his business acumen is the crux of an online debate that’s raged since 2017 concerning whether you’d be smarter to take home a massive chunk of cash or get the chance to pick his brain during a meal together.
While the exact sum has varied over the years, the most popular thought experiment is “$500,000 or Dinner With Jay-Z?” I think most reasonable people would agree the first option is the smartest one, but there are others who’d argue you be able to earn even more with the knowledge he’d presumably share during the sitdown (one person paid $19 million to have lunch with Warren Buffett for similar reasons).
Jay-Z got the chance to address that question during a recent conversation with Gayle King on CBS Mornings where he didn’t have to think that hard before issuing what seems to be a pretty obvious answer.
Here’s what he had to say:
“You gotta take the money…That’s a bad deal. I wouldn’t tell you to cut a bad deal.
Take the $500,000, go buy some albums, and listen to the albums. It’s all there. If you piece it together and really listen to the music for the words for what it is, it’s all there.
Everything that I said was going to happen, happened. Everything I said I wanted to do, I’ve done. There’s the blueprint—literally—to me and my life and my journey; it’s there already.”
Cases closed.