Jay-Z has weighed in on one of social media’s favorite debates, or, the half-million dollar question.
When asked by CBS News’ Gayle King if it’s smarter to take $500,000 in cash or have lunch with Jay-Z, the rapper and entrepreneur said bluntly: “You’ve gotta take the money.”
When King explained the other side of the argument — that the insight one might glean from a meal with Jay-Z could be valued higher than half a million dollars — Hov insisted that all his wisdom is embedded in his records. “You’ve got all that in the music for $10.99,” Jay-Z said.
He continued, “That’s a bad deal! I wouldn’t tell you to cut a bad deal. Like, 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 gonna happen happened. Everything I said I wanted to do, I’ve done. There’s the blueprint,” Jay-Z said, nodding to the title of his 2001 album. “The blueprint, literally, to me and my life and my journey is there already.”
The question — a bag of cash or a meal with the richest rapper of all time — has circulated social media since at least 2017, when an Instagram user posed the question: “$10,000 in cash or 10-minute dinner with Jay-Z?” The debate then spread to Twitter, sparking heated discussion, think-piece videos and a whole lot of memes.