You Done Changed: Jay Z Thinks Water Is Totally Free

People always knock individuals that become successful. They’ll accuse them of changing or forgetting where they came from. While most accusations of being boushie are born from jealousy, it appears that Jay Z really has forgotten about his early days of struggling in Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects.

On Monday night, Jay Z relaunched the Tidal music streaming service at a New York City event. The service is co-owned by music artists including J-Hova, Beyonce, Daft Punk, Jack White, Rihanna, Alicia Keys and Madonna. The service intends to be owned by artists and will treat artists with respect. And by respect we of course mean money. Tidal allegedly pays artists twice as much as rivals like Spotify.

Jay Z called the launch a “moment that will forever change the course of music history.”

Tidal, which had approximately 500,000 subscribers in 2014, will offer millions of songs and thousands of high-definition videos available in 31 countries, but it will not have a free version. There are two subscription options differentiated by audio quality, $10 a month for a compressed format (What most streaming services offer) and $20 for CD-quality sound.

In an interview with the New York Times he justified the need to pay for music:

“The challenge is to get everyone to respect music again, to recognize its value. Water is free. Music is $6 but no one wants to pay for music. You should drink free water from the tap — it’s a beautiful thing. And if you want to hear the most beautiful song, then support the artist.”

Maxim editor Jason Feifer noticed a gaffe in his statement and tweeted it out for all to enjoy.

I understand the premise of what Jigga is attempting to convey here, but it’s still not correct. A bottle of water will set you back like $3, which is nothing to a mulch-millionaire such as Young Hov.

Jay Z, AIR! AIR was the correct analogy to make! But even with air you have to pay like $.25 for 37 seconds of air to fill your tires.

You’d think that a man who used to sell water and rapped about it in his track U Don’t Know would realize that it costs money and that’s why he was selling it.

I sell ice in the winter, I sell fire in hell
I am a hustler baby, I’ll sell water to a well

You done changed Jay.

[JasonFeifer]