This marks the first NFT for both Jigga and Adams and, the release notes, it is the only officially authorized event the rapper has approved to commemorate the album’s anniversary. A portion of the auction’s proceeds will benefit the Shawn Carter Foundation. The piece, titled “Heir to the Throne” - the original title of the album - will be sold by auction house Sotheby’s as an NFT in a single-lot auction, with bidding open Friday (June 25) and going through July 2nd here. The one-of-one digital artwork “comments on and recontextualizes the album’s iconic cover,” according to a release. If we could get a collective Twitter eyeroll for that, that'd be marvelous.Jay-Z commissioned a one-of-one NFT digital animation from artist Derrick Adams to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his landmark 1996 debut Reasonable Doubt album. The color is so specific that it has to be some kind of homage.' “We don’t have any literature that says made the painting for Tiffany,' executive vice president of products and communications, Alexandre Arnault, told WWD. have been making about Equals Pi's turquoise background. Truthfully, if anything in this whole campaign is ripe for mockery, it's the completely unfounded assertions that Tiffany & Co. (Beyoncé is even going to sing 'Moon River' to Jay-Z at some point, so. Are we all going to be sick to death of this ad campaign in six months' time? Oh, you betcha. Does it feel weird to see Basquiat's work being used in this way? That's up to you, but given that one of his closest collaborators in life was Andy Warhol-the person most responsible for blending high art with commercialism in the first place-it's hard to imagine he'd mind very much. Should Jay-Z think about getting his own hairdo? Maybe. Would it have been more ideal for people to first see this painting in a way that didn't involve also trying to sell jewelry? Of course. Only three other women have ever been permitted to wear it: Mary Whitehouse, Audrey Hepburn and Lady Gaga.Īll of which are, quantifiably, very good things. Beyoncé is the first Black woman to ever wear the 128.54 carat Tiffany Diamond. Which means the world will finally be able to see it, and in a place that doesn't charge an entrance fee.ģ. Tiffany's has purchased Equals Pi and plans to display it in their flagship Fifth Avenue store in New York once it has completed renovations.

Tiffany & Co's (undoubtedly gargantuan, but currently unknown) payment to Bey and Jay for the campaign also involves a $2 million donation for scholarship and internship programs at HBCUs.Ģ. In the online kerfuffle, three significant aspects of the ad campaign have been largely skipped over.

Jay z on to the next one art