With all due respect to my esteemed colleague, Brooklyne Gipson, past and present, and without further... to do.

1) Black people will listen to Jay-Z, regardless of whether or not there's any reason to.

If it wasn't already proven that time he got so many black guys to stop wearing ridonkulously overpriced vintage sports jerseys and start wearing button down shirts with motherfucking baseball caps, there shouldn't have been any question, once so many people went out and copped the Blueprint 3, as if it was a good album. Jay-Z has reached that level of success where he no longer has to make a case for himself. Whatever he's selling, black people are buying. If you aren't, you're just a hater. In that sense, he might be the single most influential black man in America. His closest competition would probably be Barack Obama, but people are starting to grow tired of his shit. It's cool and all having a black president, but when will I be receiving my Obama prize in the mail? Cornel West had to get in his ass about that the other day. No homo? Whereas, Jay-Z doesn't really promise you much of anything in the first place.

2) Why should the Illuminati give a shit if Jay-Z is black?

If the Illuminati's main goal is to reduce the world's population from upwards of seven billion to a much more manageable 500 million, which I believe it is, because it says so on a miniature version of Stonehenge they had built down in Georgia, probably not far from that hilarious statue of 2Pac, they're gonna have to kill a lot of black people, as well as a lot of white people, Asians, so on and so forth. It says right there in Ras Kass' "Nature of the Threat" that white people only represent a mere teaspoon of milk in the world color majority. And I happen to know that that's even more true now than it was back in 1996, because I read Pat Buchanan's Death of the West, which is all about how white people are being outbred by brown people (and which makes me wonder if Pat Buchanan has ever heard "Nature of the Threat"). I wrote a review of it back in like '05. Who better to lead so many black people to slaughter than the man so many black people already follow around as if they were sheep?

3) How come Jay-Z still has all of his money?

Damon Dash used to have damn near as much money as Jay-Z, and now he can't even afford the note on his Chevy Tahoe. In fact, why does he even have a Chevy Tahoe? Isn't there some sort of luxury version of a Tahoe, targeted towards black people? Is that what the Yukon is? I know he's got that art studio down in Tribeca, where he puts on indie rock shows and kicks it with some especially tall and skinny white woman, which is what I'd do with my house, if I had the means, but I read in an article where he's got some sort of arrangement where he doesn't have to pay rent. In exchange, the guy who owns the building probably now owns Mos Def's publishing or some shit. Expect that all to come tumbling down by the end of the year. And Damon Dash is hardly the only black celebrity who couldn't hold on to his money. Quick, name one black person with that kind of money who didn't somehow manage to fuck it all up. See, you can't do it. Jay-Z is damn near the only one. And I don't think it's because he's just that smart. This is the same guy who shot his brother for smoking his ring and stabbed Un Rivera for bootlegging Vol. 3. Who knows what else he's done. Someone must be protecting him.

4) What if Jay-Z just doesn't know he's in the Illuminati?

Jay-Z finally went on the radio the other day and stated unequivocally that he does believe in god (crap!) and that the idea that he's a member of the Illuminati is silly, but what if he really is a member of the Illuminati and he just doesn't know it? Maybe he's being controlled by puppet strings that he can't see. That would be a lot easier than actually inviting him to one of their meetings and trying to convince him to join, in which case he could just say no. Plus, he keeps such a high profile that it'd be hard to even get him to one of their meetings, what with the stalkerazzi watching his every move. Then you'd have to worry about him accidentally revealing all of the top secret information, in one of his raps. Whereas this way he doesn't even know what's going on. I happen to know, because I saw it on an episode of Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, that the government has developed technology with which they can take any ol' guy off the street and turn him into a trained assassin, using mind control techniques. This one guy had killed mad people, and he didn't even know it...

5) The reason we have so many things to worry about besides the Illuminati is because of the Illuminati. Duh!

Yeah, there was an earthquake in Haiti, which killed a shedload of people, but who do you think caused that earthquake? That's just an easy way to knock out 100,000 Haitians in one fell swoop, as part of their plan to get the population under control. If there's only gonna be 500 million people left, they probably don't need any Haitians at all. Priorities, people! Notice how all of these natural disasters occur in places where poor ethnic people live? The government has a machine called HAARP that can cause all kinds of natural disasters, including an earthquake like the one that hit Haiti. In other parts of the world, like Venezuela, it's common knowledge that the quake in Haiti was caused by HAARP. It's been reported on the evening news. Meanwhile, you haven't heard HAARP so much as mentioned on the news here in the US, despite the fact that they did nothing but cover the quake for a good week or so. Anderson Cooper is probably still down there, throwing rocks at kids from off camera and then carrying them to safety. You know CNN is aware of HAARP, because there was an episode of Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura about it, and I actually saw a commercial for Conspiracy Theory during their Haiti coverage. They must not think I can put one and two together.

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