Celebrity Buzz

Jay-Z Gets Behind H2O

Jay-Z may have parted ways with Cristal, but he's ready to share his new beverage of choice with the masses.

The rap mogul announced Wednesday that he has joined forces with the United Nations and MTV to film a documentary about the lack of accessible fresh water around the world and the difficulty that more than 1 billion people around the globe have obtaining the life-sustaining liquid.

The Diary of Jay-Z: Water for Life, set to premiere Nov. 24 on more than 150 MTV channels and 50 local programming stations in 179 countries, will follow the Hard Knock Life artist on his latest world tour, chronicling his meetings with people affected by the clean-water crisis as well as his visits to poverty-stricken locations where environmentally savvy methods of obtaining drinkable water have already been implemented. The tour kicks off Sept. 9 in Poland, with filming to eventually begin in Turkey.

Jay-Z's self-imposed retirement from performing appears to be over. The Def Jam Records president returned to the stage June 25 at Radio City Music Hall to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his debut album Reasonable Doubt.

During a press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York alongside MTV President Christina Norman and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Jay-Z spoke about visiting Africa and being stricken by the dismal conditions facing so many of the continent's inhabitants.

"As I started looking around and looking at ways that I could become helpful, it started at the first thing--water, something as simple as water. It took very little, very little to see these numbers."

"These numbers" being the 1.1 billion people in the world living without clean drinking water and the 2.6 billion who lack proper sanitation, according to U.N. figures.

"I figure that once I stumbled upon that," Jay-Z said, "if the information was out and young people knew that these problems exist while we're having Poland Springs at Cipriani and things like that, that we'll get involved."

And just how involved does Beyoncé's boyfriend, whose last public strategic maneuver was to replace cases of Cristal with bottles of Dom Perignon, plan to get?

"In the beginning, when I was going out on a world tour, I was going out to play music," Jay-Z said. "But I said to myself, I can't go to these places I've been and not go out and see the people that have been touched by my music for over 10 years. From that morphed, 'Well, I'm not just going to go there and, you know, rap to them.' I want to touch and help and maybe see what I can do in these areas."

The rapper let reporters in on his posse's plan to build 1,000 "play pumps" in Africa, mechanisms that pump water from a well into a storage tank as they spin around like merry-go-rounds. Jay-Z also expressed hope that the kids who watch his documentary then inform their possibly more-affluent parents about the cause.

"It's a huge responsibility and humbling at the same time," Jay-Z told MTV News after the press conference, referring to the magnitude of what he's taking on. "I wanted to go to these [new places] to just tour and play music. Of course, I can't go to any place without touching the culture and seeing what's going on…I'm not a politician--I'm just a regular person with a heart. If you see a problem like that and do nothing about it, there's something wrong with you."

When asked whether he'll end up penning a rap about his journey, Jay-Z left the possibility on the table.

"I'm inspired by culture and by the things about me," he said. "I can't say yes but that's usually how it happens."

posted by Steve @ 4:36 AM