[Ari Melber]
Now to our special report. Around the world, many nations face corruption. In the U.S., police often tell themselves a story about America being exceptional or superior to other nations when the facts show there is American corruption in voting rights, criminal justice, housing policy. A political system that faces legal corruption with some of the most expensive campaigns in the world and many critiques of U.S. foreign policy, which brings us to this 1996 exchange, between Louis Farrakhan and CBS'S Mike Wallace

[Mike Wallace & Louis Farrakhan]
You got to Nigeria, which is, if not the most corrupt nation in Africa—and it is—it could be the most corrupt nation in the world
35 years old. That's what that nation is. Now, here's America, 226 years old. 30 years ago, black folk got the right to vote. You're not in any moral position to tell anybody how corrupt they are. You should be quiet. When you have spilled the blood of human beings—has Nigeria dropped an atomic bomb and killed people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Have they killed off millions of native Americans? How dare you put yourself in that position as a moral judge? I think you should keep quiet
Can you think of one more corrupt?
Yeah, I'm living in one. I'm living in one. I didn't mean to be so fired up
No, no, that's good
That's my passion

[Ari Melber]
Farrakhan was not correct about everything in his career, but those points resonated with many, as he dispatched the contradiction between America's reality and perhaps her selective vision of herself. Corruption just refers to fraudulent conduct by the powerful, which is pervasive across American history, and especially in the long war on drugs. So remember that exchange—we will come back to it. Tonight in this report, about the failed and the often racist war on drugs, which started so long ago, that we've covered this story many ways. Tonight, we're going to look at it through the life and poetry of an American who lived it, and lived to tell about it. And he sure is telling. It's an American dream story and you may know some of it. But you don't know all of it, especially since the story's not over. And a new instalment just came out heading into this weekend, as Jay-Z uses an unusually long four minutes of straight poetry to tackle the drug war, business, discrimination, and perseverance. The poetry is spoken over a beat in a song with other artists. And I think you will see why it's poetry as we go through it now. Jay, also known at Hov, marvelling how he went from poverty to a billion and touting, how those others basically came from his same space or crib. Kanye, who worked with him as a producer and collaborator. Rihanna, who Jay signed early on, and LeBron, who's linked to Jay's Roc Nation company. So Jay's reference there to, "technically", is both the caveat, LeBron's done plenty on his own, and a double entendre for technical fouls in basketball. Jay opens there by asking forgiveness for making his first dollars off drugs, cooked on a stove, and notes he left that. Drug or dope game with his record clean, turning the cocaine into champagne. And that's a nod to his ability to evade charges. A clean record gave him the lane to go from street coke, to the good life of the champagne. It's also a play on how he makes money off records, his albums are now clean records since he left the street life, while the alchemy of turning illegal coke into legal bubbly sounds like a turn on Jesus turning water to wine, and it is, because soon after, Jay completes the parallel

[Jay-Z]
Jesus turned water to wine, for Hov, it just took a stove

[Ari Melber]
But think about it. There's nothing automatically legitimate about wine or champagne. It was criminally punished during prohibition, a policy that ultimately fueled gangs and violence and was the only constitutional amendment ever to be reversed because both parties determined that prohibition was a messy failure, so politicians turned the alcohol back to a legitimate business, a slippery spectrum, which Jay notes a few lines later in this poem saying, "Breezy what the business is, we pushin’ Fenty like Fentanyl, the 'ish is all legitimate, E was down ten for this". And those lines quickly go from prohibition to a war on street drugs, associated with minorities, as mentioned earlier in this broadcast, to Fentanyl, a huge driver of drug problems and deaths, which politicians do not treat criminally, the same way they attacked the drugs that Jay or others once sold. I can tell you corporations have made over 10 billion dollars selling addictive painkillers—legally. So that's a contrast. Jay also invokes the fellow billionaire Rihanna, citing her Fenty fashion line, noting everything they produce now, that they deal, if you will, is legitimate. And that other line I mentioned refers to "E," Emory Jones, his an associate who served roughly ten years with a drug sentence and now works at Jay's company. And look, many listeners may not know his name, but the story is something so many communities know. It illustrates how hundreds of thousands of others are locked up for nonviolent drug offences. The data shows the drug war is discriminatory, that entire categories of drugs can be arbitrarily banned, or allowed, often depending on who is really using them. That ranges from prohibition like I mentioned to the opioid abuse, which does not involve the same sentences dealt to Black and Brown Americans. Or marijuana, long classified as the most severe federal level, schedule one. But now, bet you've heard about this, marijuana has been shifted by politicians and voters, to legal, in 19 states and counting. But the warehousing of so many people for drugs that are now, right now illegal all over the nation, well, as a policy matter, it's absurd. Even before you get to race, it's also been documented as racist. Now, Jay did evade indictment for dealing illegal drugs. Now he gets paid for selling legal ones. He founded the upscale 'Monogram' marijuana company, which is a play on the traditional term, 'monogram', a reference to selling a gram, and this poem marvels about living on both sides of the law in one lifetime, as this law around the country has been changing. I want you listen here as Jay conjures the image of a monogram joint in his pocket, while actual monograms are often embroidered on the breast pocket. Jay invokes being a writer. He's careful with his sentences, or bars as lyrics are called, because he lives now the legitimate life. Writing sentences, not jail sentences. Rap bars, not jail bars. And those jail bars come from the Draconian Laws, so he'll clash with those who make the laws he says—as he calls that clash with the plain term, 'smoke', which is also a play on the smoke he now sells legally. It's deep. This is the kind of elevated prism for these issues. I can tell you we've interviewed many lawmakers who don't come close to this level of nuance about drug policy and its arbitrary and pernicious results. The same song then briefly explores how pain fuels growth

[Jay-Z]
All this pain from the outside, inspired all this growth within
So new planes gettin' broken in
Highest elevation of the self
They done — around and gave the right — wealth
[Ari Melber]
Now, those new planes could be just private jets. As Jay notes you would need to right people to buy them, the right brothers with enough wealth, or a double entendre there apparently, to The Wright Brothers who invented plane travel. The same line cites another Jay business, the 'Paper Planes' brand, which tees off a sorta' childhood imagination when you fold a paper plane. Now, am I reaching? Well, art is always up for interpretation, but I can tell Jay's long time producer, Young Guru, decodes this part of a verse in a new video that was just posted online

[Young Guru]
You got to realize that everything being said in here is
A fact, bruh, it's not aspirational no more. New planes getting broken in. It's like literally paper planes, the brand, so new clothes, like when you try on new clothes you're breaking in new clothes them. Man just ordered a new plane. But then it's new planes getting broken in, new levels of existence

[Ari Melber]
All right, so if you're counting, that's airplanes, the planes company, 'Paper Planes', and planes of existence. Quadruple entendre. This poetry like other great art, takes more time to fully understand than it takes to just see or hear on a first glance. That is why many people say Jay remains the greatest of all time, known by the acronym, G.O.A.T., and by at the end of this dense poetic verse, which just dropped on Friday, Jay admonishes his—would be judges or competitors—as donkeys, a play on G.O.A.T., but then makes a reference that takes us all the way back to where we began

[Jay-Z]
Next time we have a discussion who the G.O.A.T., you donkeys know this
Forgive me, that's my passion talkin' (Haha)
Sometimes I feel like Farrakhan (Haha) talkin' to Mike Wallace (Haha)
I think y'all should keep quiet

[Ari Melber]
That's his passion talking. Jay invoking that classic moment we showed you to offset his own grandiose talk. Asking forgiveness for being so strident, even as he meant every word. But notice what else he's doing, ending this poem just as he began it when he asked forgiveness for dealing drugs in his youth. And notice what else he's doing, a Farrakhan parallel can apply just to proclaiming himself the greatest, that would like, I think, a little [?], or maybe it can apply all the way back to this entire poem about America's drug war and Jay's own path. Think about it—decades in, this billionaire entrepreneur with proven success, measurable success in music, media, sports, business, law, and politics, still finds he must explain basic facts about American corruption and racism to elite and White society, and many leaders and people still don't see it, or refuse to face it. That kind of entitled ignorance, which can cause real damage to real people's lives, well, that might raise your ire. It might get your passion talking. And if the facts are talking, well, it's a good time for people to listen. And then listen again, and make sure you got the point