Archive: Jay-Z and Tinfoil Hats
After graduating from college, I worked as a summer intern for a recording studio in Toronto called Euphonic Sound. They bundled in audio recording services along with some marketing, design and PR services for their artists. My main task was writing blog posts and conducting interviews for their podcast series.
The studio and website are long gone, but I’ve managed to recover some of my old content via the Wayback Machine. A lot of them had audio of the interviews, but they were mostly hosted on the website and can't be recovered.
I’ve done some light formatting and editing because frankly the typos are embarrassing, but have tried to otherwise keep these as close to the original versions as possible. Any links are probably all broken, I'm not gonna fix them.
We were all "Companero [Name]" for some reason.
Notes:
- The header image filename is jayfoil.jpg, which would be a sick rapper name.
- This article sucks. I wrote a bad article. This didn't need to exist but I birthed it like the smoke demon in Game of Thrones. I’m including it anyway, but it's just... not good.
Jay-Z and Tinfoil Hats
June 23, 2010
Before you really get into this post, you might want to go make yourself a tinfoil hat.
Companero Jack here. With my newfound role as an investigative journalist, I have been tasked by our fearless leader, James Pew, to shed a little bit of light on a terrifying aspect of music and pop culture. By writing this article and exposing the shadowy powers that be, I’m putting myself in grave danger. You, faithful reader, might find your own life in peril as well just for reading this.
Who am I kidding? Nobody’s coming to get you.
We had a workshop last week, the purpose of which was to try and familiarize ourselves with approaching prospective talent to try and bring into the studio. Fairly straightforward. We broke into two groups, one of which was productive, and one of which devolved into a discussion of secret societies, occult symbolism and Jay-Z.
The song that was brought up in the discussion was ‘Run This Town’ by Jay-Z, Rihanna and Kanye West.
I’m going to preface this by saying that I’m a skeptic and a believer of the idea that if a person is looking for patterns or symbolism, they will see them. That said, on we go.
The song and video are apparently loaded with occult symbolism and messages from the Illuminati, the secret order of powerful people that supposedly run the world. Just for the sake of simplicity, pretend I threw the words “supposedly” or “apparently” in each of the following points.
- The lit torch handed to Rihanna can be associated with Satan and the idea of illumination. The Illuminati are dedicated to the “coming forth of the conquering light.”
- The lyrics, specifically those of the chorus refer to a coming of a New Order that will rule the world or “run this town.”
- The rioting mob, dressed in guerilla-style clothes, seems to be set to overthrow the current order and “run this town,” which contrasts with the glamourous lyrics of the song. It could be implied that they are set to overthrow something more philosophical.
- Jay-Z asks the listener to “pledge their allegiance” to a new leader and wear black in his honour.
- Jay-Z states “I gave Doug a grip,” which could refer to a secret Freemason handshake, called a grip.
I’ll skip going through all the lyrics of the song, because they could all potentially have some insane hidden meaning. Something else of note that is recurring in Jay-Z’s videos is the Roc-A-Fell hand sign, the diamond.
The diamond often takes on more of a triangular shape, which can be interpreted as a reference to the All-Seeing Eye, a traditional Masonic symbol
To go with that idea, notice that Lady Gaga tends to have one eye hidden, or highlighted with makeup or a gesture. The hidden eye and the ‘A-Ok” gesture are supposedly used by Illuminati-connected artists to signify 666. This is stupid and as far as I’m aware, incorrect. I was under the impression that the Satanic number 666 was mistranslated, and therefore meaningless. I digress…
I think that with an industry worth so many billions of dollars, and with so many people out to get our money, there’s bound to be rumours of various levels of insanity.
James had a decent point about how rappers have all this money, yet rarely give back to their communities. There’s an Illuminati idea of becoming a "god through your own means." To me, this is a metaphor for the accumulation of wealth and power, which also signifies some greed. Therefore, they’re too greedy to give back to their struggling communities.
On the other hand, as Shawn so cleverly observed, if these shadowy figures are running the music industry, why is it doing so poorly?
Or do they just want us to think the industry is suffering?
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