On December 30, more than two years after then-sheriff Bill Young urged Strip casino operators not to book gangsta-rap acts, fearing it could hurt tourism, a former Brooklyn thug opened a sports bar/lounge inside the Palazzo, the Venetian’s $1.8 billion sister property.
The $20 million 40/40 Club Las Vegas—third in the chain, joining New York and Atlantic City outposts; sister properties in Tokyo and Macau are set to open this year—is grand, possibly to sports bars what the Parthenon was to Doric architecture. Hundreds attended on grand-opening night last Friday; few, it seemed, actually eyeballed the sports action on the screens.
To borrow a phrase from Biggie Smalls, 40/40 co-owner Jay-Z has gone from “ashy to classy.” He has a record label and clothing line and partial ownership in the NBA’s New Jersey Nets, and he recently spent $66 million to build a hotel in Manhattan’s Chelsea District. In landing on the Strip, he joins a group more exclusive than the inspiration for his club—the four baseball players who’ve hit 40 home runs and stolen 40 bases in a season (Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, Alex Rodriguez and Alfonso Soriano): He’s the first hip-hop mogul to own a business on the Strip.
What this means is up for debate. Young was unavailable for comment. (Many clubs continued playing thug rap after Young’s thug-rap prohibition push. On New Year’s, Poetry inside Caesars hosted a birthday bash for Vallejo thug E-40.) Is Jay’s Strip debut the equivalent of Jackie Robinson integrating baseball, a means for hip-hop to (re)gain local respect on the Strip? Can Vegas now forever banish its “Mississippi of the West” past to the dustbin of history? Or is this simply Jay-Z and the Las Vegas Sands Corp. (the Palazzo’s owner) exploiting an opportunity?
Considering that local hip-hop acts have rarely booked Strip venues, V hip-hop magazine founder Brandon Greene says 40/40 probably won’t change things. Local rappers get “no love,” he says.
Rainier Spencer, founder and director of UNLV’s Afro-American Studies program, says the club shouldn’t be celebrated as a cultural or historic milestone. “Old-style racism is simply not done any longer, and in that sense the ‘Mississippi of the West’ moniker has been dead for many years, probably. And to not exploit financial gain is just plain dumb.”
Andreas Hale, editor-in-chief of the respected hiphopdx.com, says overhyping Jay’s accomplishment is just as bad as underappreciating it, especially in light of Young’s gangsta-rap-ban crusade, which he says was misconstrued as a war on race. Instead, he says, it was a war on class. “Clubs like Pure and Tao still played hip-hop because, at the end of the day, money talks. Jay had to have the money or we wouldn’t be talking.
“The people who are lured to the club are rich white folks,” Hale says. “The average person wouldn’t want to come there in jeans because they’d feel underdressed. When I interviewed him, Jay said the club was something for his celebrity athletic buddies to come and watch games. As for young blacks in Las Vegas, this is not a significant accomplishment. And there’s no comfort in this for the local hip-hop community. Most of the local hip-hop shows are done off the Strip.”
I’d argue different: 40/40’s opening is historic, more profound than Lorenzo Creighton becoming president of New York-New York or BET founder and billionaire Robert Johnson’s failed Tres Jazz restaurant (now home to the successful Le Burger Brasserie) at Bally’s. Johnson, Oprah Winfrey or Russell Simmons—who laid the blueprint for hip-hop moguldom, own a hip-hop label (the iconic Def Jam), start a multimillion-dollar clothing line (Phat Farm), branch into other businesses (women’s clothes, perfumes)—could open a business on the Strip and nobody would bat an eye. They’re mainstream, acceptable, palatable.
Sure he’s cleaned up well, but Jay’s been no angel. Big-time drug dealer. Arrested for stabbing a hip-hop rival. Busted for gun possession. A background not unlike those of Vegas’ mob forefathers, save for one big difference: He’s black. 40/40 may not be Robinson integrating baseball or the NAACP helping desegregate the Strip in 1960, but it is a milestone, a small step forward for Vegas, a hint at what’s possible. It’s significant in light of the Strip’s history: Jay oversees a small piece of the street Sammy Davis Jr. and Lena Horne performed on but couldn’t stay on.
Palazzo executives could’ve picked from any of America’s top nightclub companies, several of which operate here. They chose Jay-Z.