Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and J. Cole are not your average signed artist. They are three of the biggest names in the music industry, all with labels of their own, and move how they want to move. No label is forcing any of them to have their music sold at a retailer they don't want to associate with. Two of them don't even inform their label on when they're about to drop music.

If Gaga could drop Target all the way back in 2011, then Drake, Kendrick, and Cole absolutely could've done the same in 2025 if they wanted to

Mf target is just a bougie Walmart get a grip

Born This Way sold 1M albums first week and she still had to fight to stop the Target deluxe.

Jay Z owns his own distribution channels, willingly shopped his album to Target, and you can't understand why he's being criticized over those 3?

Drake is one of the best-selling musicians of all-time and signed the biggest recording contract of all-time

Kendrick is one of the best-selling rappers ever and has numerous Diamond songs and albums

Both of their last albums are more successful than Gaga's last album

Drake in 2026 is ten times more powerful in the industry than Gaga was in 2011

Jay Z shopped his album to Target because (for the hundredth time) they are the only feasible option when it comes to major retailers that still sell vinyl in-stores

There isn't a major retailer out there that isn't ran by racist white men. If Jay Z was launching a Target-brand product, that would be really f***ed up. But he's using one of the various racist-owned, white-dominated, corporate retailers, to sell an album he made 30 years ago and is pressing up without Target's involvement in the production.

F*** Jay on the grounds of f*** all billionaires, but if he sold this album at any other retailer, it would be just as problematic. The problem is the system itself, Target is a symptom of a bigger problem and boycotting the store individually doesn't do much.

They sell affordable daily goods people need, as long as people are strapped for cash the chain isn't going away. The Starbucks boycott was effective because it targeted a fundamentally luxury industry that people don't need to engage with daily/weekly to survive. You'd have to boycott every major retail chain in the United States simultaneously to make an impact, which is a great idea, but then it truly would be immaterial where Jay decided to shop the album. As it stands, he's just betting on the best horse. Nothing virtuous or even clever about it, but it's not like a damning betrayal lol. Same with Kanye teaming up with Adidas or ASAP Rocky with Under Armor.

Also where's this energy for Drake's Amazon-manufactured merch line lmao. That's direct collaboration with the most predatory, monopolized retailer on the planet that is tangibly grinding workers into f***ing dust and destroying low-income, often minority-dominated communities with data centers and warehouses that drive out local business/housing without guaranteeing employment for the communities they're situated in, providing absolutely zero direct consumer value to the local population but instead exporting that value to random people ordering s*** all over the country.

Apparently he was forced at gunpoint to do that and had no say in the matter according to @midzy

?

JAY Z will go broke if his 30 year old album isn't available at Target

All these words when the crux of the matter is:

Jay Z (and most other rappers) are capitalist pieces of s***.

Jay Z, unlike other rappers, deliberately leverages his position as a GOAT to deliberately sabotage movements targeted at advancing the struggle against the discrimination of Black people.

The second point is why it seems like hes being used as a scapegoat.

Die a hero or live long enough to become the villain

Acting like the nigga didnt bring this on himself

Nah, it's genuinely just people thinking that Jay is the first rapper since the boycott to release a vinyl with Target. It's pure ignorance

hella fine shyt be in Target though lol

What should I be mad about today Twitter

So does this apply to every other rapper who is selling vinyl through Target? Every other legendary rappers?

That's truly fine if so, but singling out Jay Z isn't a bad thing to do, it's just ineffective. He's selling a product at a store like every other merchandiser in there, including many self-proclaimed progressive rappers like Kendrick Lamar.

And yeah of course Jay is is a bourgeois piece of s***, but that's not really because he's hawking vinyl at a major retailer lol. That's because of the s*** salaries people get paid working at 40/40 clubs, tangibly contributing to gentrifying Brooklyn, and running Roc Nation HQ like a sweatshop.