March 17, 2011, 6:00 am
What Happened to the Jay-Z Jeep?
By JONATHAN SCHULTZ
Before Diddy and his missing Mercedes-Benz S-Class, before Eminem and his imported-from-Detroit Chrysler 200, even before Funkmaster Flex and his special-edition Ford Expedition, there was the Jay-Z Jeep Commander. You would be forgiven, however, for not remembering the commercials.
Penguin Group
In an unauthorized biography released today, the Forbes magazine editor Zack O’Malley Greenburg relates the tale of a cross-promotional deal gone sour, in which Jay-Z, the multiplatinum hip-hop artist and entrepreneur, was ready to lend his name to a special-edition Jeep Commander, until Chrysler executives became apprehensive about the rapper’s criminal past and let the collaboration languish in the boardroom.
Consequently, the Jay-Z Jeep never rolled deep.
Mr. Greenburg dissects how the collaboration went awry in “Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went from Street Corner to Corner Office” (Penguin Portfolio). The author’s first inkling of his eventual scoop came during a telephone conversation with Michael Berrin, a Detroit-based musician and marketing consultant whom enthusiasts of hip-hop of the early ’90s might remember as MC Serch, half of the duo 3rd Bass.
Mr. Berrin, who knew Jay-Z before the Brooklyn native ever secured a recording contract, told Mr. Greenburg that he had facilitated conversations in 2005 with Mopar — the parts and service arm of Chrysler, which also commissioned special-edition Chrysler vehicles — to build a Jay-Z Jeep Commander.
The S.U.V. would be painted Jay-Z Blue, a hue the rapper had previously patented with the assistance of other business partners. Additional touches included 22-inch chrome wheels, cream-colored leather interior and a digital entertainment system preloaded with the artist’s entire discography.
Marques McCammon, an associate of Mr. Berrin, worked at the time for American Specialty Cars, the Michigan-based design consultancy responsible for the retrofuturist Chevrolet SSR. Mr. McCammon became the primary conduit between Mopar executives — they were unnamed in Mr. Greenburg’s text — and Mr. Berrin, who kept Jay-Z informed of the deal’s progress.
In the book, Mr. Greenburg relates a conversation with Mr. McCammon at Aptera Motors in Oceanside, Calif., where Mr. McCammon works as the chief marketing officer. Mr. McCammon said much of his work on the deal was devoted to combating the executives’ apprehension about his client.
“I spent most of the time just trying to break down the stereotypes or the misconceptions of Jay’s evolution as a person. … They don’t understand, necessarily, the story of a guy who works his way up from the street to become a prominent business person. They hear the street piece, and they get stuck on that.”
Mr. McCammon succeeded, however, and received Mopar’s commitment to produce a run of 1,000 Commanders to Jay-Z’s specifications. But a week before the rapper was to fly to Detroit to close the deal, Mr. McCammon learned that a management reshuffling at Mopar, combined with the division’s lingering unease about associating a Chrysler product with the rapper, had sunk the deal, Mr. Greenburg writes.
Jay-Z went on to make a high-profile appearance in the 2007 Detroit auto show for General Motors when he stepped out of a GMC Yukon S.U.V. onto a red carpet. He also featured a Jaguar XJ sedan in his 2010 video for the single, “On to the Next One.”
In 2005, not long after the Jeep collaboration fell apart, according to Mr. Greenburg’s timeline, Chrysler produced a series of television commercials featuring Lee A. Iacocca, the automaker’s former chief executive, with Snoop Dogg, the once-controversial hip-hop artist. Given the dissolution of the Jeep deal, Mr. Greenburg writes that the pairing was “perhaps a conciliatory gesture to the hip-hop world.”
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/what-happened-to-the-jay-z-jeep/?pagemode=print
