Emanuela de Paula (born April 25, 1989 in Cabo de Santo Agostinho, Pernambuco, Brazil) is a African Brazilian model.She has been the face of UK retailer Next for the past two seasons and can be seen in the 2009 Pirelli Calendar.
This Underwater Photography By Jacques Dequeker is dope. Emanuela is wifey status ! Goodness !
Zoe Saldana speaks on her life: “I want to have more sex, travel more, drink more wine and love life.
GLAMOUR: How has your definition of glamour changed over the years?
ZOË SALDANA I love aging. Why would I want to be 21 for the rest of my life? Glamour is about feeling good in your own skin.
GLAMOUR: In past interviews, you’ve bristled on the topic of race. Why?
ZOË SALDANA Because ethnic is a word that doesn’t exist in my vocabulary. In Hollywood, you hear things like, “Oh, they loved you but they want to go more traditional.” That’s the new N word. So when [someone says] I look “dark,” I say, “Dark compared to whom? This is just my skin.”
GLAMOUR: This truly is the Year of Zoë Saldana . How has your life changed?
ZOË SALDANA To quote a rapper, “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.” More work, less time to live.
GLAMOUR: Is it tough to make time for your boyfriend, [actor] Keith Britton?
ZOË SALDANA Well, it’s not like he sits around waiting. We travel a lot, which keeps things alive. We’re very private. It’s worked for 10 years—long enough to go to hell and back.
GLAMOUR: Where will you be in 10 years?
ZOË SALDANA I want to be the best daughter, sister, friend and wife I can possibly be—because when I die, I am not going to be buried with my Oscar. I want to love life.
__________
* I’ll never stop loving this chick….
On the run, the lingerie model who heads an all-women cocaine-smuggling cartel
By Mail Foreign Service
A lingerie model is believed to be the mastermind behind an all-women drug gang that smuggles cocaine into Britain.
An international arrest warrant has been issued for Angie Sanselmente Valencia, 30, who is said to only hire glamour models to transport the drugs from South America to Europe.
It’s believed that Colombian-born Valencia had been seeing a Mexican drug lord known as ‘The Monster’ but split with him at the end of last year to form her own cocaine-smuggling gang.
Wanted: Angie Sanselmente Valencia, who was crowned Colombia’s ‘Queen Of Coffee’ in 2000, left modelling and moved to Argentina late last year to establish her drugs network
She is said to describe the women working for her as ‘unsuspicious, beautiful angels’. The women are told to be ‘nice, but not flashy’.
Valencia, who was crowned Colombia’s ‘Queen Of Coffee’ in 2000, left modelling and moved to Argentina late last year to establish her network.
Her ‘angels’ were paid £3,200 for each trip they made and one of her gang is believed to have boarded a flight every 24 hours with the packages of cocaine.
From Argentina they would fly up to the Mexican Caribbean resort of Cancun and from there they would smuggle them into Europe.
However her network began to unravel several weeks ago when one of her ‘drug mules’ was caught at Argentina’s Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires carrying 55kg of cocaine.
Valencia’s network began to unravel when one of her ‘drug mules’ was caught at Argentina’s Ezeiza International Airport (pictured) in Buenos Aires carrying 55kg of cocaine
The 21-year-old woman began to talk and within 12 hours police investigators had arrested a further three people.
The drug mule had made no attempt to hide the cocaine in her suitcase because she’d been told no one would stop her at the airport, according to Argentine newspaper La Nacion.
Police are now investigating the gang’s links to people working at the airport.
Following the arrests Valencia promptly disappeared from a four-star hotel in Buenos Aires but is still believed to be in the South American country.
She’d arrived from Mexico last December with her beloved pet Pomeranian dog. Investigators tried to trace her through the address to which the animal was registered but it only led them to an abandoned warehouse.
Birthday billionaire Stewart Rahr updated his status for the second time in the last hour through another email sent to his massive group of friends, including Forbes.
The latest note describes his morning adventures, including several celebrity meet-ups, as the pharmaceutical mogul makes the rounds on his 64th birthday.
“Wow I am rocken it 2day,” he writes, again in all caps. “Had first breakfast w my pal Mike Milken at Regency..Then had second birthday breakfast w Pres Clinton.. Now at 1my pals Alicia Keys n Swizz Beatz having lunch at Kinray..Wow then later meeting w Will I Am of Black Eye Peas..”
Of course, Rahr signed his usual, self-coined title “Stewie Rah Rah, the #1 King of All Fun.”
Happy Birthday, Mr. Rahr.
*This is from yesterday, 02/19/2010, Rahr expressed his thoughts on Tiger Woods. Make sure you read Rahr’s bio via Forbes down below after his thoughts on Tiger. He seems like he would get the party started and end it, I bet Mr. Rahr is hilarious.
Earlier this morning, in another mass email to a group, including Forbes, Rahr expressed his thoughts on Tiger Woods:
Rahr expressed his thoughts on Tiger Woods (See “Rahr on Tiger Woods: A True Phony”). Read the rest of this entry »
These days, I’ve become increasingly alarmed by the growing pattern of recklessness and neglect that seems to govern the management of our personal finances. Recent actions—or I should say inaction—by large numbers of African Americans have prompted me to suggest taking a bold step and declare a state of financial emergency. I make this assertion not for dramatic effect but to bring attention to the need for us to take corrective measures. If not, this self-destructive behavior will continue to threaten the future of our families for generations to come.
Let me give you an example. I recently discovered much to my dismay, that 21.7% of African American households are “unbanked,” while 31.6% are “underbanked,” compared with 3.3% and 14.9% of white households, respectively. What does this mean? As a member of the unbanked, you’re walking around without a checking or savings account. The underbanked rely primarily on nonbank money orders, check-cashing establishments, and payday loans to conduct transactions.
By refusing to use traditional banking services, a sizable segment of our community is accepting what I consider a form of second-class citizenship, relegating themselves and their families to a financial underclass. Without access to checking and savings accounts or credit and debit cards, engaging in basic activities such as renting cars and booking hotels becomes difficult—if not impossible. Moreover, the inability to establish a solid credit rating derails any chance of buying a home, the cornerstone of wealth-building.
Many avoid financial institutions for one reason: fear. Last year’s financial crisis provided some with an excuse to maintain their outmoded mattress finance mentality. But the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has insured checking and savings accounts for 76 years (the coverage limit for depositor accounts currently stands at $250,000), and not one depositor has ever lost a cent. Moreover, you have to ask yourself whether a major bank has a better chance of going out of business than the local check cashing store.
I know some of you may believe this issue of being unbanked doesn’t have anything to do with you. After all, those who fall in the unbanked category reside in relatively low-income households—at least 71% had annual earnings of less than $30,000. But this money management phobia and lack of discipline is endemic across economic stations. For instance, Insight Center for Community Economic Development reported that 42% of whites invested in an IRA or Keogh plan for retirement versus a mere 7% of African Americans. And the Ariel Education Initiative and consulting firm
“Malia will tell you, my attitude was, if she came home with a B, that’s not good enough because there’s no reason why she can’t get an A…” –President Barack Obama, ESSENCE
ESSENCE kicks off the first of its three-part education series, “Teaching Our Children,” with a White House exclusive–an interview with President Barack Obama. In his first interview of 2010, he talks tough with ESSENCE editor-in-chief Angela Burt-Murray, Deputy Editor Tatsha Robertson and Washington Correspondent Cynthia Gordy about holding teachers accountable, closing the education gap between Black and White students, how he and First Lady Michelle Obama encourage daughters Malia and Sasha to love learning, and how you can do the same with your own children.
I don’t see Will Smith …did I miss something…? Didn’t Will Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, rank fourth with $48 Million for Hollywoods Top Earning Couples…Maybe that’s based on endorsements and investments like “Carols Daughter”. Check the Vanity Fair piece below..
Despite setting a domestic box-office record of $10.6 billion in 2009, Hollywood is on edge. The oceans of easy, eager money that once flooded the industry from foreign investors, hedge funds, and private-equity pools have all but dried up. And with actual attendance still off sharply from its 2002 high and DVD revenues in retreat, fewer and fewer movies are getting made. Worse still, from a talent point of view, where once studios were happy to reward stars with lavish back-end deals siphoning money straight from the studio’s share of the box-office gross, they are now reining in such deals, forcing many stars to collect only when all of the film’s costs have been recouped. In Hollywood, then, as in most of the country, people just aren’t getting paid what they used to. But for a select group the money is still rolling in.
First, a definition: this list of Hollywood elite is limited to creative figures—producers, directors, stars—in film. (We include no moguls, agents, or people who work primarily in television.) Calculating their earning power is an inexact science, but we interviewed scores of people with access to actual numbers and deal terms: agents, lawyers, studio executives, and, occasionally, the stars themselves. Worldwide box-office figures were taken from Box Office Mojo and Box Office Guru. Revenue numbers for DVDs—for the first three quarters of 2009—were supplied by Adams Media Research; we came up with our own revenue estimates for DVDs released in the fourth quarter by applying a conservative multiplier to a movie’s domestic box-office.
So how do we tote up our final earnings estimates? A few simple ground rules:
In tabulating up-front fees, we assume people get paid when filming starts; thus, only movies that commenced shooting in calendar year 2009 are taken into account. (That’s why we don’t count Brad Pitt’s $10 million fee for Inglourious Basterds, which began shooting in 2008.)
For those lucky enough to earn money on the back end, we did our best to determine whether they were gross-point or net-point players and applied our math accordingly. (Example: Pitt’s fee for Inglourious Basterds was an advance against 9 percent of the gross. With some $160 million in studio revenue, Pitt stood to collect a total of almost $14.5 million, minus his $10 million advance, leaving him with $4.5 million from the film for 2009.)
A star’s participation in DVD sales is taken into account, but that generally is small change, unless he or she is one of the few director-producer types who have negotiated exceptional deals. We have not counted royalties and other revenues when the figure is under $500,000. Nor have we counted money made in television; thus, for a major player in both film and TV such as Jerry Bruckheimer, his total 2009 earnings are millions of dollars higher. Since these numbers are estimates, however well informed, and by definition incomplete, they are presented for entertainment purposes only.
1 Michael Bay
(William Morris Endeavor Entertainment)
Estimated 2009 earnings: $125 million
$75 million: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (back-end profit participation for directing and producing, based on worldwide box-office gross of $835 million)
$28 million: Transformers: R.O.T.F. (share of estimated $280 million in DVD revenue)
$12.5 million: Transformers: R.O.T.F. (share of toy and other licensing royalties)
$4 million: Friday the 13th (back end for producing, based on worldwide gross of $90 million, and share of DVD)
$2 million: The Unborn (back end for producing, based on worldwide gross of $77 million, and share of DVD)
$2 million: A Nightmare on Elm Street (fee for producing inexplicable remake)
$1.5 million: Royalties from older films, other income2 Steven Spielberg
(Creative Artists Agency)
Estimated 2009 earnings: $85 million
$50 million: Universal theme-park royalties and consulting fees (ongoing deal signed in 1987)
$20 million: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (fee for producing and directing upcoming 2011 release)
$10 million: Other back-end revenue, royalties from older films
$5 million: Transformers: R.O.T.F. (back end as executive producer)3 Roland Emmerich
(CAA)
Estimated 2009 earnings: $70 million
$70 million: 2012 (back end for producing and directing, based on worldwide gross of $746 million as of December 31)4 James Cameron
(CAA)
Estimated 2009 earnings: $50 million
$50 million: Avatar (back end for producing, writing, and directing, based on worldwide gross of $830 million as of December 31)5 Todd Phillips
(CAA)
Estimated 2009 earnings: $44 million
$39 million: The Hangover (back end for directing, based on worldwide gross of $460 million, and share of DVD)
$5 million: Due Date (fee for producing and directing upcoming comedy starring Robert Downey Jr.)6 Daniel Radcliffe
(Artist Rights Group)
Estimated 2009 earnings: $41 million
$20 million: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I (fee for starring in upcoming penultimate Potter film)
$20 million: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II (fee for starring in 2011 series finale, also filmed last year)
$1 million: Royalties from older films, other revenue7 Ben Stiller
(WME)
Estimated 2009 earnings: $40 million
$20 million: Little Fockers (fee for starring in upcoming “threequel”)
$6 million: Greenberg (fee for starring)
$6 million: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (back end for starring, based on worldwide gross of $415 million, and share of DVD)
$5 million: Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (back-end bonus for voice work, and share of DVD)
$2 million: Megamind (fee as executive producer of upcoming animated film)
$1 million: Submarine (fee as executive producer of upcoming indie film)check the rest after the jump.. Read the rest of this entry »
Adding up family’s year buying black.
By Ted Gregory
Tribune reporter
It’s been a year since John and Maggie Anderson embarked on a controversial adventure in empowerment to spend their money exclusively with African-American businesses in 2009.
They’ve learned a few things, not the least of which was that they were a little naive.
“It was more difficult, to be honest,” Maggie Anderson said as the year concluded. “We went out all starry-eyed.”
As with most wisdom, the more meaningful lessons emerge from the more demanding struggles. So it was with the “Empowerment Experiment,” said the Andersons, of Oak Park.
“There were certainly some challenges,” John Anderson said. “But at the same time, the relationships we have cultivated — not only with the business owners but also in mobilizing so many people across the nation who have embraced the message — that’s been the biggest blessing of this whole year. It has been a wonderful year.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Well, if Anne Hathaway – 27, from the quiet, affluent suburb of Millburn, New Jersey – is so prim, so naive, so wide-eyed and so innocent, then what on God’s earth is she doing sitting opposite me, mid-way through a long, hot, lazy lunch in Los Angeles, flashing her hazel eyes while gently tonguing, yes, tonguing, the back of her china-white palm like a tip-hungry stripper at Le Crazy Horse? It’s an act that’s head-swimmingly discombobulating. The actress’ supposed façade of niceness has been pulled back – just for a split second – to reveal something far, far wilder. For Anne it’s her very own SuBo moment.
“We were talking about kissing,” I offer clumsily, shattering the crackling sexual menace in a voice that, on hearing the words aloud, suddenly sounds about as come-hither as a car’s sat-nav command. Anne, perhaps sensing my inability to form a proper sentence, takes the lead: “You have to leave your mouth open a little bit…” she purrs, making me squirm into uncharted levels of prudishness, closing her eyes and smudging her plump red lips against her own left hand, which she’s holding tenderly with her right as she might the face of a co-star. “Open up,” Anne suggests breathlessly as the earth seems to spin ever so slightly faster on its axis. “More, more, ever so lightly… otherwise you’re going to be getting smooshy,” she advises. “Now… slow it down… just a little bit…”
via GQ
more pics after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »
The World’s Biggest Signpost from adghost on Vimeo.
Craaaaaaaazy, the key to our continuation is communication.
Whatever happen to following the North Star…..It’s natures Satellite/GPS . HA !
RE: The Dark Cloud hovering over Eminem
“I never even told him this, but I remember that Eminem came into the studio when we made ‘Moment of Clarity,‘ which he produced, on The Black Album,” Jay said. “So here’s Eminem. It’s 2003, I think The Eminem Show had come out, and he was, like, the biggest rapper in the world — he sold, like, 20 million records worldwide or some ridiculous number. But when he came to the studio, I remember I hugged him and I could feel that he had on a bulletproof vest. I couldn’t imagine being that successful. I mean, he’s a guy who loves rap and wanted to be successful his whole career. Then he finally gets it, and there’s this dark cloud over him.”
RE: Kanye West
MITCHELL: Sometimes his passions ruin him.
JAY-Z: Yeah, which is great. I like that, man! I really do. I mean, no one’s walking around here perfect. Everyone’s gonna make mistakes. That’s part of how you learn. I think Kanye . . . Well, I know he said what he believed. He was telling the truth.
MITCHELL: To which event are you referring?
JAY-Z: I’m talking about the Taylor Swift thing. I just think the timing of what he did was wrong, and that, of course, overshadowed everything. He believed that “Single Ladies” [by Jay-Z’s wife, Beyoncé] was a better video. I believed that. I think a lot of people believed that. You can’t give someone Video of the Year if they don’t win Best Female Video. I thought Best Female Video was something you won on the way to Video of the Year. But, hey, I guess it wasn’t—and that’s a whole other conversation about awards shows and artists.
MITCHELL: You’ve always had interesting takes on awards shows. I remember back in the day, you talked about the Grammys and said, “Well, they don’t take rap seriously, so why should I go? They don’t know what we do—and they don’t care about what we do.”
JAY-Z: It’s just honest, man—they really didn’t. I’ve always seen awards shows for what they are. For the awards show people, it’s about sponsorships—it’s not about recognizing anyone’s art, because if you get into the business of recognizing art, then you have to get it right all the time. You have to get it right. You can’t have the woman who wins Video of the Year not win Best Female Video. I mean, Herbie Hancock is great, but you can’t have him beat the Kanye album that year. I mean, come on, seriously. That can’t happen. That just lets me know that the people who get to pick these ballots just check the only name they know. I think that’s what’s happening with rap music now.
MITCHELL: Yeah?
JAY-Z: I think it’s a bunch of people who don’t know anything about rap, and have probably never even heard a Kanye West album, are doing the nominating, and they say, “Kanye West. I know that name. That’s the guy who made the comments about the president that time! He’s nominated!” That’s how the process works, and I think that’s part of Kanye’s frustration. Me, I look at it for what it is. But Kanye is so passionate about it. I mean, the guy shot three “Jesus Walks” videos. Three. Two of them he shot with his own money just so he could get it right. He really cares about it. And then, back to the original point, his passion kicks in and he takes things too far . . . He doesn’t realize that that girl, Taylor Swift, is just like him. That was her moment. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t do anything. It’s not her awards show. So he just did the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time.
From the February 2010 “People Who Matter” issue — on sale soon
Jay-Z walks into a gracious chamber at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel. It’s the same room where, thousands of years ago, crown moldings were born. He walks in and already waiting for him is a tight litter of reporters with their recording de-vices and their notebooks. This is the sort of intimate press thing where the celebrity talks about whatever product he is endorsing, and they serve cold sandwiches and hummus dip. The product today is DJ Hero, a video game with which un-urban kids and guys in their mid-thirties with Costco memberships can scratch Jay-Z’s beats from the suburbanness of their own homes.
He sits down in his hard-backed chair and the reporters collect around him in a buttery little square. But Jay-Z doesn’t really sit. What he actually does is slalom down in his chair, real low like it’s a water slide. Seventy-three inches of all-black everything, laid out like a ramp. Black sunglasses, too, to block the hotel light.
“Hey, fuck shit,” he says, and he smiles so the whole room laughs.
He’s cool and tall and black. He’s witty and very cocky, but the cockiness is the unannoying kind you might admire.
He speaks differently, more warmly, to women than to men. He might be winking but you can never tell behind the sunglasses. At forty, he’s learned how to adjust for his audience, while the audience only notices that he’s pretty cool, and even kind of like them. An un-urban white guy says, “Oh, word,” after Jay-Z sublimely answers his question about an old-school gaming console. When Jay-Z charmingly says he’s so good at the game that he would destroy a female reporter at it, she laughs for too long.
A few years ago, President Clinton did the same thing. Jay was in the president’s ear at the Spotted Pig, the Manhattan restaurant he co-owns, and the president was doubled over, holding his belly, southern breathless, saying, “Stop. Stop it. You’re killing me!”
What’s different here is that Jay-Z is not Bruce Springsteen. Jay-Z is a half-dangerous rapper who grew up in the gat-happy projects of the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He sold crack on feral corners and shot his brother for stealing his ring. Badass, for real. So it’s a little weird, isn’t it, that he can make reporters and presidents alike giggle?
Two days from now, Jay-Z will perform the new New York anthem “Empire State of Mind” before a sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium. He will join U2 onstage in Berlin and get introduced by Bono to German screams as “the mayor of New York City.”
The very next morning, back in New York, Jay-Z will be introduced by the real mayor of New York as a “great New Yorker” to New York screams at the ticker-tape parade, before performing his anthem and riding atop one of the Yankees’ floats.
That same night, Jay-Z will enjoy an early dinner with A-Rod at Manhattan restaurant Nello’s before Maybaching down to Madison Square Garden to watch good friend and fellow superstar LeBron James crush the New York Knicks.
Around this time, the embattled governor of New York will call a reporter to confirm that Jay-Z has indeed been an inspiration during his recent rough patch. Governor Paterson says, “Jay tells me, ‘I’ve got your back.’ ”
But it’s the other thing the governor brings up that’s more interesting. Paterson says that every time he sees a Yankee hat, he thinks it’s Jay, “because he understands branding. I would daresay there are few people who understand it better.”
Ah, branding! It’s how you make a product so dearly iconic that people say the brand name when they mean the item itself, like “Kleenex” for “tissue.” And Jay-Z, here at the rich old Plaza Hotel dressed darkly and sitting horizontally, understands it really well. In fact, he understands it so damn well that he’s doing it differently than anyone ever has before, which is making him more famous than any hip-hop artist ever, and making him more money, too. But it’s the unintentional part of what he’s doing that’s changing America forever.
It wasn’t always like this, the rapper mogul sitting at the conference-colored table, imprinting his brand upon the masses. In his first office, when he was hooked up with thirsty, stop-at-nothing Harlem manager Damon Dash — the sort of man who tells you how hot his hot new things are until you either believe him or convince him that you do — roaches dog-paddled in the water cooler. They paid for everything in cash, rolls of fives and tens. It was amateur hour at the gangland Apollo. Unprofessional as hell but gangster slick. During one show Jay-Z tossed stacks of bills into the crowd.
But four years ago, Dash went the way of those bills. And now, today, on the amber floor of Jay’s clothing line, Rocawear, the lack of gangster is glaring. Lots of pretty black females padding around on high heels, professionally greeting visitors, professionally lauding their boss. This is corporate, carpeted America, bright and federated, a glass warren of office spaces with several small but cool concept showrooms and gallons of clear, roachless water.
Look up, left, and listen. Jay-Z’s vamping scowl is paraded everywhere, his presence vibrates from sound systems and is woven into the fabrics. You can smell Jay-Z in the rich notes of his new fragrance. A few blocks away, the CEO of the New Jersey Nets (of which Jay-Z owns a small stake) says he asks him for advice on how to better appeal to VIPs. More high-end stuff! says Jay. What kind? you ask the CEO. Just high-end stuff! he says. There is a hotel line with Jay’s name on it in the works. There are meetings about signing new talent, designing more shoes.
What Jay-Z actually does in those meetings is mythical, and irrelevant. Because what matters most deeply to every colleague, partner, and acolyte is the gift of saying that Jay-Z helped them arrive at a look, a sound, a smell, a decision. The jewel Jay-Z brings to every boardroom — the shining VVS diamond — is his name, his brand, his Jay-Z-ness, the glory of which is as unspecific as it is iconic.
Outside of the music and advertising industries, not many people know of the guy who cut and set the Jay-Z jewel. Damon Dash, in fact, is far better known. But you utter this other name in the music or ad worlds and there’s a queer little nod, an “Oh, yeah, Steve Stoute.” Not the fox that was spotted in the chicken coop, but the slippery one that picked the latch.
Short and bald with a body type that plugs his surname, Steve Stoute is the underfamous but ubiquitous guy in all the celebrity pictures. Steve Stoute and Jay-Z. Steve Stoute and P. Diddy. Steve Stoute and Mary J. Blige. Steve Stoute and Jay-Z again. Cock your head, wink, reach up and wrap your arm around your moneymaker, and … cheese!
He’s black and also liquid-shiny like the mimetic shape-shifting bad guy in Terminator 2. He’s real deal-eyed, and what first comes off as arrogance you realize later is sentience, with an extra side of arrogance. He’s wily as hell, plus hyper-protective and defensive of his products, both intellectual and carbon-based.
A former executive at Sony, where he first met Jay-Z over a game of Madden, Stoute eventually slithered over to the advertising world and worked his way up the ranks, learning how to sell street gear to white America. Authenticity is Stoute’s psalm. It is a religion that he sells best and preaches savagely. He knows that’s how you make it big in white corporate America without getting ripped for being a total sellout in the hood. I’ll take this money, I’ll shill Budweiser, but only because I always drank Budweiser.
“Jay-Z is the CEO of authenticity,” proclaims Stoute, who himself was willed an epithet by BusinessWeek — the McKinsey of Pop Culture. “Jay,” he says intensely, “was saying no to things he didn’t believe in when he first started, when he had no money. He never changed himself.”
But just as much as Stoute can lecture companies on how they can attract black and Latino consumers, he can also school black and Latino artists on how to appeal to corporate America. He is the swami of the crossover illusion — helping minority artists maintain their edge, their authenticity, while ensuring they appear unthreatening to the tennis-and-linen set.
Stoute’s worldview is both oracular and pretend color-blind. He talks a lot about the “tanning of America.” He means all those demographic boxes of black and white and Latino and eighteen to thirty-four, how the country has always been conveniently but ignorantly grouped by age and color into those debilitating provincial boxes, with no attention paid to the like mind-sets that bleed across them — the so-called tanning.
His bag is pairing hot musicians with the brands he claims make sense for them: Beyoncé for Tommy Hilfiger’s True Star fragrance, Chris Brown for Wrigley’s Doublemint gum. Stoute’s the guy responsible for taking a mediocre Justin Timberlake song and iconicizing it into the “I’m Lovin’ It” campaign.
But perhaps Stoute’s greatest success is the one that really tucked him and Jay in together: Reebok. Which was also Jay-Z’s first real endorsement gig, and his own line within a bigger line — the S. Carter collection. He and 50 Cent, rapping in loud shirts, selling a sneaker that hadn’t enjoyed any cultural relevance since the 1980s. It was Jay’s idea to get 50 in there but Stoute’s idea to make Reebok an urban brand. Why did Jay do Reebok and not Nike? Because, you see, the swami was hired by Reebok, and the swami had spoken. “It wasn’t ‘Jigga and Nike,’ because Jay-Z and I have a relationship that’s really strong,” he told a reporter at the time.
Like an endorsement-gathering snowball tumbling down the great white slopes, that relationship grew bigger and stronger with each partnership. Next came the HP campaign, in which Jay-Z is presented as the CEO of hip-hop, in which he is charming, funny, suited, and tie-clipped, discussing how he uses the computer to make his music, to manage his tour, his investments, the Nets stadium blueprints. He is powerful and iconic and corporate and safe — and he is headless, appearing from just the well-appointed neck down.
Then Budweiser, Heineken. Recently DJ Hero, Jaguar. Along the way, Damon Dash’s influence began to wave its tired arms from a lifeboat somewhere off the coast of Jay-Zion. And with each deal, another rough edge of Jay’s raw diamond was sanded down, as with each endorsement and appearance he was being furtively but surely groomed into a mainstream brand even a president could love. (Stoute likes telling the story of when Obama called Jay early in the presidential campaign and asked him what’s going on in America.)
Today, according to executives in the music industry and a sulky Dash, Stoute is pretty much involved in every aspect of Jay’s business. “Stoute was one of the first to realize that [African-Americans] had to diversify,” says one high-level executive familiar with the relationship. “And he’s taught that to Jay and is showing him how to stretch it across the spectrum of his brand.”
He has also taught Jay that friends invest in their friends. Together, they have founded and funded Stoute’s baby, Translation Advertising.
A little more on the sycophantic side, and like all Jay’s colleagues, Stoute loves relating stories about Jay’s insightful ideas. Stoute says that Jay, in his role as chief ideation officer at Translation, came up with some strategies for Johnson & Johnson. Baby oil, Jay suggested, should be marketed for its other uses, to remove makeup or to mix with suntan lotion so it glides on smoother. Those are its outside-the-box applications, and Jay-Z, with Stoute highlighting the blueprint, has learned to translate the niche into the mainstream.
And thickly those blueprints paper the walls of Jay-Z’s world. When asked how he approached Jay about starting up Translation Advertising, Stoute says that they’ve known each other for fourteen years and they’ve done a lot of things together. So, he says, a little irately, “It wasn’t an approach. It was just, ‘This is what we’re doing.’ ”
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From the February 2010 “People Who Matter” issue — on sale soon
Jay-Z walks into a gracious chamber at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel. It’s the same room where, thousands of years ago, crown moldings were born. He walks in and already waiting for him is a tight litter of reporters with their recording de-vices and their notebooks. This is the sort of intimate press thing where the celebrity talks about whatever product he is endorsing, and they serve cold sandwiches and hummus dip. The product today is DJ Hero, a video game with which un-urban kids and guys in their mid-thirties with Costco memberships can scratch Jay-Z’s beats from the suburbanness of their own homes.
He sits down in his hard-backed chair and the reporters collect around him in a buttery little square. But Jay-Z doesn’t really sit. What he actually does is slalom down in his chair, real low like it’s a water slide. Seventy-three inches of all-black everything, laid out like a ramp. Black sunglasses, too, to block the hotel light.
“Hey, fuck shit,” he says, and he smiles so the whole room laughs.
He’s cool and tall and black. He’s witty and very cocky, but the cockiness is the unannoying kind you might admire.
He speaks differently, more warmly, to women than to men. He might be winking but you can never tell behind the sunglasses. At forty, he’s learned how to adjust for his audience, while the audience only notices that he’s pretty cool, and even kind of like them. An un-urban white guy says, “Oh, word,” after Jay-Z sublimely answers his question about an old-school gaming console. When Jay-Z charmingly says he’s so good at the game that he would destroy a female reporter at it, she laughs for too long.
A few years ago, President Clinton did the same thing. Jay was in the president’s ear at the Spotted Pig, the Manhattan restaurant he co-owns, and the president was doubled over, holding his belly, southern breathless, saying, “Stop. Stop it. You’re killing me!”
What’s different here is that Jay-Z is not Bruce Springsteen. Jay-Z is a half-dangerous rapper who grew up in the gat-happy projects of the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He sold crack on feral corners and shot his brother for stealing his ring. Badass, for real. So it’s a little weird, isn’t it, that he can make reporters and presidents alike giggle?
Two days from now, Jay-Z will perform the new New York anthem “Empire State of Mind” before a sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium. He will join U2 onstage in Berlin and get introduced by Bono to German screams as “the mayor of New York City.”
The very next morning, back in New York, Jay-Z will be introduced by the real mayor of New York as a “great New Yorker” to New York screams at the ticker-tape parade, before performing his anthem and riding atop one of the Yankees’ floats.
That same night, Jay-Z will enjoy an early dinner with A-Rod at Manhattan restaurant Nello’s before Maybaching down to Madison Square Garden to watch good friend and fellow superstar LeBron James crush the New York Knicks.
Around this time, the embattled governor of New York will call a reporter to confirm that Jay-Z has indeed been an inspiration during his recent rough patch. Governor Paterson says, “Jay tells me, ‘I’ve got your back.’ ”
But it’s the other thing the governor brings up that’s more interesting. Paterson says that every time he sees a Yankee hat, he thinks it’s Jay, “because he understands branding. I would daresay there are few people who understand it better.”
Ah, branding! It’s how you make a product so dearly iconic that people say the brand name when they mean the item itself, like “Kleenex” for “tissue.” And Jay-Z, here at the rich old Plaza Hotel dressed darkly and sitting horizontally, understands it really well. In fact, he understands it so damn well that he’s doing it differently than anyone ever has before, which is making him more famous than any hip-hop artist ever, and making him more money, too. But it’s the unintentional part of what he’s doing that’s changing America forever.
It wasn’t always like this, the rapper mogul sitting at the conference-colored table, imprinting his brand upon the masses. In his first office, when he was hooked up with thirsty, stop-at-nothing Harlem manager Damon Dash — the sort of man who tells you how hot his hot new things are until you either believe him or convince him that you do — roaches dog-paddled in the water cooler. They paid for everything in cash, rolls of fives and tens. It was amateur hour at the gangland Apollo. Unprofessional as hell but gangster slick. During one show Jay-Z tossed stacks of bills into the crowd.
But four years ago, Dash went the way of those bills. And now, today, on the amber floor of Jay’s clothing line, Rocawear, the lack of gangster is glaring. Lots of pretty black females padding around on high heels, professionally greeting visitors, professionally lauding their boss. This is corporate, carpeted America, bright and federated, a glass warren of office spaces with several small but cool concept showrooms and gallons of clear, roachless water.
Look up, left, and listen. Jay-Z’s vamping scowl is paraded everywhere, his presence vibrates from sound systems and is woven into the fabrics. You can smell Jay-Z in the rich notes of his new fragrance. A few blocks away, the CEO of the New Jersey Nets (of which Jay-Z owns a small stake) says he asks him for advice on how to better appeal to VIPs. More high-end stuff! says Jay. What kind? you ask the CEO. Just high-end stuff! he says. There is a hotel line with Jay’s name on it in the works. There are meetings about signing new talent, designing more shoes.
What Jay-Z actually does in those meetings is mythical, and irrelevant. Because what matters most deeply to every colleague, partner, and acolyte is the gift of saying that Jay-Z helped them arrive at a look, a sound, a smell, a decision. The jewel Jay-Z brings to every boardroom — the shining VVS diamond — is his name, his brand, his Jay-Z-ness, the glory of which is as unspecific as it is iconic.
Outside of the music and advertising industries, not many people know of the guy who cut and set the Jay-Z jewel. Damon Dash, in fact, is far better known. But you utter this other name in the music or ad worlds and there’s a queer little nod, an “Oh, yeah, Steve Stoute.” Not the fox that was spotted in the chicken coop, but the slippery one that picked the latch.
Short and bald with a body type that plugs his surname, Steve Stoute is the underfamous but ubiquitous guy in all the celebrity pictures. Steve Stoute and Jay-Z. Steve Stoute and P. Diddy. Steve Stoute and Mary J. Blige. Steve Stoute and Jay-Z again. Cock your head, wink, reach up and wrap your arm around your moneymaker, and … cheese!
He’s black and also liquid-shiny like the mimetic shape-shifting bad guy in Terminator 2. He’s real deal-eyed, and what first comes off as arrogance you realize later is sentience, with an extra side of arrogance. He’s wily as hell, plus hyper-protective and defensive of his products, both intellectual and carbon-based.
A former executive at Sony, where he first met Jay-Z over a game of Madden, Stoute eventually slithered over to the advertising world and worked his way up the ranks, learning how to sell street gear to white America. Authenticity is Stoute’s psalm. It is a religion that he sells best and preaches savagely. He knows that’s how you make it big in white corporate America without getting ripped for being a total sellout in the hood. I’ll take this money, I’ll shill Budweiser, but only because I always drank Budweiser.
“Jay-Z is the CEO of authenticity,” proclaims Stoute, who himself was willed an epithet by BusinessWeek — the McKinsey of Pop Culture. “Jay,” he says intensely, “was saying no to things he didn’t believe in when he first started, when he had no money. He never changed himself.”
But just as much as Stoute can lecture companies on how they can attract black and Latino consumers, he can also school black and Latino artists on how to appeal to corporate America. He is the swami of the crossover illusion — helping minority artists maintain their edge, their authenticity, while ensuring they appear unthreatening to the tennis-and-linen set.
Stoute’s worldview is both oracular and pretend color-blind. He talks a lot about the “tanning of America.” He means all those demographic boxes of black and white and Latino and eighteen to thirty-four, how the country has always been conveniently but ignorantly grouped by age and color into those debilitating provincial boxes, with no attention paid to the like mind-sets that bleed across them — the so-called tanning.
His bag is pairing hot musicians with the brands he claims make sense for them: Beyoncé for Tommy Hilfiger’s True Star fragrance, Chris Brown for Wrigley’s Doublemint gum. Stoute’s the guy responsible for taking a mediocre Justin Timberlake song and iconicizing it into the “I’m Lovin’ It” campaign.
But perhaps Stoute’s greatest success is the one that really tucked him and Jay in together: Reebok. Which was also Jay-Z’s first real endorsement gig, and his own line within a bigger line — the S. Carter collection. He and 50 Cent, rapping in loud shirts, selling a sneaker that hadn’t enjoyed any cultural relevance since the 1980s. It was Jay’s idea to get 50 in there but Stoute’s idea to make Reebok an urban brand. Why did Jay do Reebok and not Nike? Because, you see, the swami was hired by Reebok, and the swami had spoken. “It wasn’t ‘Jigga and Nike,’ because Jay-Z and I have a relationship that’s really strong,” he told a reporter at the time.
Like an endorsement-gathering snowball tumbling down the great white slopes, that relationship grew bigger and stronger with each partnership. Next came the HP campaign, in which Jay-Z is presented as the CEO of hip-hop, in which he is charming, funny, suited, and tie-clipped, discussing how he uses the computer to make his music, to manage his tour, his investments, the Nets stadium blueprints. He is powerful and iconic and corporate and safe — and he is headless, appearing from just the well-appointed neck down.
Then Budweiser, Heineken. Recently DJ Hero, Jaguar. Along the way, Damon Dash’s influence began to wave its tired arms from a lifeboat somewhere off the coast of Jay-Zion. And with each deal, another rough edge of Jay’s raw diamond was sanded down, as with each endorsement and appearance he was being furtively but surely groomed into a mainstream brand even a president could love. (Stoute likes telling the story of when Obama called Jay early in the presidential campaign and asked him what’s going on in America.)
Today, according to executives in the music industry and a sulky Dash, Stoute is pretty much involved in every aspect of Jay’s business. “Stoute was one of the first to realize that [African-Americans] had to diversify,” says one high-level executive familiar with the relationship. “And he’s taught that to Jay and is showing him how to stretch it across the spectrum of his brand.”
He has also taught Jay that friends invest in their friends. Together, they have founded and funded Stoute’s baby, Translation Advertising.
A little more on the sycophantic side, and like all Jay’s colleagues, Stoute loves relating stories about Jay’s insightful ideas. Stoute says that Jay, in his role as chief ideation officer at Translation, came up with some strategies for Johnson & Johnson. Baby oil, Jay suggested, should be marketed for its other uses, to remove makeup or to mix with suntan lotion so it glides on smoother. Those are its outside-the-box applications, and Jay-Z, with Stoute highlighting the blueprint, has learned to translate the niche into the mainstream.
And thickly those blueprints paper the walls of Jay-Z’s world. When asked how he approached Jay about starting up Translation Advertising, Stoute says that they’ve known each other for fourteen years and they’ve done a lot of things together. So, he says, a little irately, “It wasn’t an approach. It was just, ‘This is what we’re doing.’ ”
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