It is a little confusing to a rapper's street cred, when they are collaborating with a retailer on a Holiday promotion, but it gets even trickier when a rapper finds himself caught between " the man" and racial profiling case said retailer in involved in. Here's is the situation Jay-Z finds himself facing while trying to keep his cool .
The collaboration would find the store carrying merchandise by top designers, inspired by Jay-Z and Jay-z acting as the creative consultant with the stores window displays. So really not much more on the rapper's part than having his likeness used to boost the brand of products. Still the public has been quick to lash out against this partnering.
New York's Barney's high end retailer whose loss prevention specialists that stopped shoppers Trayon Christian and Kayla Phillips in separate incidents. Christian sued Barneys in April after he was accused of credit card fraud when he attempted to purchase a three hundred and fifty dollar Ferragamo belt with his debit card . Kayla Phillips has filed a claim and is reportedly still planning to sue, after she was stopped by loss prevention upon buying and Celine handbag that was two and a half thousand dollars claims that she was stopped by detectives back in February, when she bought a $2,500 Celine handbag. Mark Lee, the CEO of Barney's issued an apology for the incidents and hired a civil rights experts to review their procedures in this area.
Social media , such a the rap-stars Twitter became a buzz with a petition to ban Barneys , which the rapper claims is unfair and jumping the gun before he has had a chance to fully research the situation. given the rappers past reputation for boycotting labels accused of racial profiling , his reluctance to do so in this instance has led to the rappers critics crying out that this is profit motivated on his part. Jay-z however has gone on record saying the collaboration was meant to be charity not profit based ,and he saw it as an opportunity to use the money to help under privileged teen get to college.
In Jay-z's official statement he claims to have hesitated to make a rash decision based of emotions when all the facts in this case had not yet been explored. He is waiting on the outcome of the meeting between civil rights leaders and Barneys, before he comes to a conclusive action.
