If there's one thing everyone knows about hip-hop mogul/entrepreneur Jay-Z, it is that he is an expert in all matters regarding business.
The drug dealer -turned rapper – entrepreneur is one of the wealthiest men in the world. Forbes claimed he and Beyoncé Knowles' combined incomes equate to a billion dollars. With all of this being said, it's no surprise that many people revere Jay-Z as a business role model… Everyone except Harvard University that is.
In 2005, Chanequa Campbell, a freshman at Harvard University, completed a profile for an on-campus recruiting program in which she listed Jay-Z as her business role-model. Campbell was promptly called into the Office of Career Services and told to replace Jay-Z with another business role-model. "It's not appropriate. I don't think people will respond well to this," the career counselor told her. Campbell grew up seven blocks from Jay-Z in Brooklyn and refused to replace his name for another business role-model. After some back and forth with the counselor, Campbell agreed to use Jay's legal name, Sean Carter, instead.
Campbell was later kicked out of Harvard and still gets upset discussing the lack of respect the school gave to her idol. "I know his resume," Campbell said. "He made most of his major respect—Wall Street respect—since '04. Hov [another nickname for Carter] started as an independent artist with Reasonable Doubt in 1996. Even though he wasn't going platinum, at the beginning he was making money because he owned his own label, he was his own business." Campbell continued: "That's why I love Hov. He's a prime example of how they can't hold the past against you."
It's obvious that Harvard got it wrong about Jay-Z. Campbell has bounced back from her legal troubles and is teaching in New York City. She's thinking about working at a think tank and is also writing a memoir.
- BlackLikeMoi
