Jay-Z sold Occupy-branded shirts while defending 1% entrepreneurship

Evidence

On the album, Jay-Z, who was already worth $450 million at the time and had appeared on the cover of Forbes with Warren Buffett, dedicated his verses on Watch the Throne to bragging about his blue-chip art collection. During OWS, his Rocawear brand sold twenty-two-dollar T-shirts emblazoned with Occupy All Streets, admitting it had no intention of sharing profits with protesters. Speaking with novelist Zadie Smith, Jay-Z defended his position: “The 1 percent that’s robbing people, and deceiving people…that’s criminal…. Not being an entrepreneur. This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on.” — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 224

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence of the aesthetic co-optation mechanism tied to the death of the sellout.