Jay wants indie to push rap forward

[Indifferent Clox]

As pretty much the entire music blogosphere already knows, Jay-Z, along with Beyoncé and Solange Knowles, attended JellyNYC's free Grizzly Bear show at Brooklyn's Williamsburg Waterfront yesterday. This surprise royal visit led to this pretty hilarious video of Jay and Beyoncé swaying to "Ready, Able".

As he tells MTV today, Jay himself doesn't see anything weird about the world's most recognizable rapper going to see an indie band: "I don't understand why people are always surprised to see me at shows! I've always said that I believe in good music and bad music, so I'm always at those type of events. I like music. The second Blueprint, the reason it was so all over the place was because I love music so much, so there's records on there with Lenny Kravitz and Sean Paul and Dr. Dre. I've done records with Chris Martin. I'm all over the place because of my taste in music."

But Grizzly Bear isn't exactly the same thing as Lenny Kravitz, and Jay knows it. To hear Jay tell it, he hopes Grizzly Bear and "the indie rock movement" in general will "push rap". Here's the exact quote:


"[Grizzly Bear is] an incredible band. The thing I want to say to everyone-- I hope this happens because it will push rap, it will push hip-hop to go even further-- what the indie rock movement is doing right now is very inspiring. It felt like us in the beginning. These concerts, they're not on the radio, no one hears about them, and there's 12,000 people in attendance. And the music that they're making and the connection they're making to people is really inspiring. So I hope that they have a run where they push hip-hop back a little bit, so it will force hip-hop to fight to make better music. Because it can happen. Because that's what rap did to rock.

"When rock was the dominant force in music, rap came and said, 'Y'all got to sit down for a second, this is our time.' And we've had a stranglehold on music since then. So I hope indie rock pushes rap back a bit because it will force people to make great music for the sake of making great music."