How Baby and Slim got into the oil business

You know what would be a trip? If Bronald Oil & Gas, Baby and Slim from Cash Money's new oil venture, really was successful.

What if the two of them leapfrogged the likes of Jay-Z and Oprah Winfrey to become the richest black people in America? Imagine the message it would send to today's youth, if the two black people with the most money were a guy with a buncha weird tattoos on his head, and a guy who's almost certainly caught a few bodies, just based on his facial expression.

Don't think it can't happen. Oprah has a shedload of money, but it's not really that much money in the grand scheme of things. Chris Rock once famously pointed out that if Bill Gates woke up with Oprah Winfrey's money, he'd jump out of a window - and he was probably right. The list of the richest people in America still consists primarily of white people you've never heard of, and none of them made their billions from going on TV, having conversations with child molesters and shit. A few years ago, I spent 15 minutes or so checking out a list of the richest black people in the world, in the world's most accurate encyclopedia, and as I recall, Oprah was way down on the list. The people at the top were all from Africa and the Middle East, and they probably all made their money from oil, or conflict diamonds or some shit.

Which of course begs the question: Oprah makes like $300 million a year. Why doesn't she just buy her way into the oil business and make even more money? If the guys from Cash Money could do it, certainly she could. I'm sure they've made a mint off Lil Wayne these past few years, but it probably pales in comparison to what she made.

It's probably not that easy. The thing is, why would the TIs and the A-rabs who run the oil business allow anyone else to buy into it? There's a (kinda) finite amount of oil in the world, and they've been had control of it. And it's not like they need the money. If they were ever to run out, or reach a point where they could use a little bit more than they already have (i.e. most of the money in the world), they could just jack up the price, like they did in 2008. There's only a tiny handful of people who control the world's oil supply, and they're all in league with one another. It's like a conspiracy theory, except that there isn't anything secret about it. It's just that there's not a whole lot that can be done about it, because there's a lot of Arabs in the oil business, and you can't deal with Arabs the same way you deal with regular people. Its like trying to deal with irate black women in a retail environment. Best case scenario, you don't have to get the cops involved.

There must be shenanigans involved in Bronald Oil & Gas. We've seen this before, where people from the hip-hop community achieve a certain level of success and all of a sudden all these doors open for them, and it's probably not because the TIs respect their business acumen. Take for example Jay-Z being allowed to purchase a percentage of the New Jersey Nets. Then come to find out he was probably being used as a black front for a gentrification scheme in Brooklyn. I've written a number of posts about Russell Simmons' involvement with conflict diamonds. Rush ran PR interference for the diamond industry, when that movie Blood Diamond came out. In exchange, they cut him in on the conflict diamond business, with the Orwellian titled Diamond Empowerment Fund. A lot of the money from the sale of conflict diamonds goes to settlement building in the Occupied Territories, and Russell Simmons does antisemitism PSAs. Coincidence? Then there was 50 Cent, who was given $400 million from Coca Cola, supposedly for endorsing Vitamin Water, when I didn't even see a Vitamin Water commercial with 50 Cent until after it was purchased by Coca Cola. Then next thing you know, there was talk of 50 Cent getting into the diamond mining business. It's almost as if Vitamin Water was a scheme to funnel enough money into 50 Cent's coffers for him to make a significant investment in the diamond business. Has anyone ever actually seen anyone buying Vitamin Water in the store? I'm pretty sure I've seen more people buying Pimp Juice, though I'm sure that's due in part to the fact that I used to hang out at a gas station and drink $.99 tall boys of MGD.

Of course Baby and Slim didn't need a suspicious come-up, other than the one they already had with Lil Wayne. He's pretty much the only artist left who sells albums as if people still buy CDs, and he's too high to have any idea how much wealth he's generating. If he's even aware that Baby and Slim are taking that Carter III money and using it to start an oil company, he obviously lacks the sense to demand his rightful share in it. If anything, that shit should be called Weezy F. Baby Oil & Gas - which would be especially amusing, because of how gay it sounds. They just better hope he doesn't get sober enough in the joint to realize. As far as the actual purpose of Bronald Oil & Gas, it's hard to say, without having been exposed to any secret documents or anything. Baby and Slim probably don't even know themselves. But if I had to guess, I'd say it has to do with helping the TIs justify the fact that they're stealing the oil right out from under New Orleans. I remember reading, back during Hurricane Katrina, how New Orleans never would have gotten nearly as fucked the fuck up as it was, not if the TIs gave the people there a tiny fraction of the oil business out of the kindness of their hearts or anything silly like that, but if they just paid their fare share of taxes and what have you, but they colluded with the government to make it so that the people there didn't get shit from the oil business, because it's considered offshore and hence isn't covered by the same laws. Damn.

Maybe Baby and Slim could use their newfound influence to explain to their TI overlords how unfair this is, and they could work together to come up with a more equitable solution. Ha!