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

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

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", i
s 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

Jesus turned water to wine, for Hov, it just took a stove

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, i
f 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

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

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

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

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

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) t
alkin' to Mike Wallace (Haha)
I think y'all should keep quiet

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