The Devil Wears Rocawear

Of course Jay-Z is gonna make a song about how he's not a member of the Illuminati. What, was he gonna make a song about how he is a member of the Illuminati? He must think we're stupid.

"Free Mason," his song with Rawse on Teflon Don, sounds as if Rawse called Jay to do their usual "Maybach Music" collabo and Jay was like, "Is there any way we could do a song about how I'm not a member of the Illuminati instead? People on the Internets keep saying I'm a member of the Illuminati." Rawse would obviously rather be talking about how much money he has, and the delectable taste of crab meats soaked in drawn butter. It's funny, Jay spends his entire verse talking about how he's not a member of some shadowy secret organization, while Rawse, whose entire career is built on pretending as if he's a member of various shadowy secret organizations, does the exact opposite. Let me guess - Jay-Z did his part first.

For a minute there, I was concerned that there might not be another Rawse + Jay-Z collabo. There wasn't a sequel to the original "Maybach Music," and then there was. A version with Jay-Z just kinda popped up on the Internets a few weeks ago. Presumably, it was recorded back during the sessions for the hilarious Deeper Than Rap. It wouldn't make sense for Jay-Z to put out his own remix to another artist's song, two years after the fact. That sounds like some shit 50 Cent would do. And it wouldn't make sense for Rick Ross to have a song with Jay-Z in the can, and scrap it in favor of whoever was on the second "Maybach Music." I thought there might be some saltiness between the two of them. (Nullus?) Jay-Z probably only did "Maybach Music" in the first place because Rawse was one of the few successful artists on Def Jam during his tenure, and they had him spitting guest verses on everybody's album - that may have even been the main reason he was hired. If you think about it, Rawse is like the anti-Jay-Z. Jay-Z's whole thing was that he really did sell drugs, though I'm not sure if I believe him. Rawse used to be a prison guard. He probably had to check underneath people's ballsacks for contraband. Associating himself with Rawse couldn't have been good for Jay-Z's "personal brand." I thought maybe Jay-Z realized this, and that's why he stopped returning Rawse's phone calls, once he was let go from Def Jam. If you listen to that second "Maybach Music," it sounds like Jay might be taking a few shots at Rawse. Maybe TPAR can clear it up for us at Rap Genius, which is obviously BS, if they let TPAR work for them. This clown tried to claim J. Cole wasn't taking shots at Drake on "Who Dat," and told me it could be proven by checking the entry on Rap Genius. Then he went and wrote an entry on "Who Dat" that didn't include any reference to the subliminal shots at Drake. Tha fuck kind of bullshit is that.

But I digress.

You can tell Jay-Z's insistence that he isn't a member of the Illuminati is BS, because he sounds so confident. On the one hand, he wants you to think that he's so upset that people keep saying he's a member of the Illuminati that he'd rather someone just shot him, but on the other hand, he's rapping as well as he has since he came out of fake retirement, which is to say he's not embarrassing himself. That line about how he said he was amazing, not that he's a Mason, was genuinely impressive. If he really wanted us to think that he's upset, because he believes that life is precious and god and the devil, and he's concerned that if people think that he's the devil that might cause him to go to a lake of fire and fry where you won't see him again until the 4th of July, he shouldn't have sounded so calm and collected. This is his afterlife for all of eternity he's talking about here, and people are jeopardizing it by spreading rumors on the Internets! It's obvious Jay-Z doesn't believe in any of that shit any more than I do. In fact, if he'd read Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great, he'd know that even most religious people don't really believe that there's a guy with horns coming out of his head (like the Jews) who lives in the earth's core, surrounded by a pit of molten lava, and that's where you go if you break one of the 10 Commandments, unless you sit in a booth and say you're sorry to a priest. It's just a metaphor. The only reason Jay-Z would be concerned about people thinking he's a member of the Illuminati is because he is and he realizes people are starting to figure that out.