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Jay Z sparks black rights storm at Norway's Tidal

The Local Norway
The Local Norway - [email protected]
Jay Z sparks black rights storm at Norway's Tidal
The near absence of black staff in this photo displeased Jay Z watchers. Photo: Beyonce.com

A race storm probably wasn’t the first thing staff at Spotify-rival WiMP expected when it was bought and renamed Tidal earlier this year, but that’s what happened when Jay Z and Beyonce, the US music duo behind the purchase, dropped in to the office.

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The Twitter storm appears to have started when pictures of the Tidal HQ were shared by Beyoncé, and then tweeted on by her followers. 
Black blogger and YouTube star Xavier D’Leau was not impressed by Tidal's near-universally white staff, given Jay Z's recent call for black people to help lift each other up.  He let his 75,000 Twitter followers know. 
 
 
Then Saeed Jones, a New York poet who moonlights as literary editor at Buzzfeed, picked up on it. 
After that, things started to go a little crazy. 

Jay Z fans were the first to start a backlash. 

 

Once the row came to the notice of the UK's Daily Mail, Norway's hordes of anti-immigrant trolls weighed in.  

Many just wanted to point out that Tidal is based in Norway, and that with roughly 80,000 inhabitants of African origin, only about 1.5 percent of Norwegians are black. (In fact, if you look at Tidal's staff, it's far from universally ethnic Norwegian). 

Others were more vituperative.  

 

And wasn't the only stir Jay Z and Beyoncé caused during their surprise visit to Oslo on Tuesday. Here's a video of them being mobbed by screaming fans. 

 

 

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