By Chris Taylor
NEW YORK (Reuters) - As any parent will tell you, teenagers and young adults do not really listen to what you have to say.
Nor do they pay much attention to financial firms and their earnest charts and graphs about how much people should be saving for retirement.
But here are folks they might listen to: Wyclef Jean, Pusha T, Lola Brooke, Capella Grey and Flau’jae. Those rappers have more cultural influence over younger generations than mom, dad or the local bank and brokerage.
That is why financial giant TIAA is trying out a new avenue to reach Millennials and Gen Z: a record.
Called “Paper Right,” it is a collaboration between TIAA and Jean – famed co-founder of the Fugees – to get younger demographics to start thinking about long-term issues like generational wealth
“How do you reinvent a topic, and make it cool to new generation?” asks Jean. “How do you get young kids to think about retirement?
The backdrop here is the dire state of retirement saving. In fact, 54% of Black Americans don’t have enough saved to maintain their current standard of living in retirement, according to data from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
You can’t talk about statistics and expect to make a good record, though. That is why Jean and his collaborators paint pictures in their own words, to tell their own stories of starting from little and building wealth.
BEHIND THE MUSIC
As the producer, Jean came up with the beat and the chorus. A sample (all lyrics from the site Genius.com):
“Drinks on me, got my paper right/ You can hustle too, get your paper right/ Long before that diamond, I was in the dark/ Graveyard shift, had to double up.”
Then Jean invited collaborators Pusha T, Lola Brooke, Capella Grey and Flau’jae to add their own verses. So far, it has added up to more than 600,000 streams since its release in January.
Proceeds from these streams have led to more than $100,000 in donations to a nonprofit called First Generation Investors, which teaches principles of financial literacy and investing to underserved populations in the nation’s high schools.
“The only way this is believable is if everyone on the record is spitting their truth,” Jean says.
He offers up Lola Brooke’s line about living in Section 8 public housing as an example: “I'm just comin' off of Section 8, it cut deeper than a razor blade … Financial freedom is so fulfillin'/ Generational wealth is what you show the children.”
Also talking about generational wealth is Pusha T (“Rather build a legacy for my son, that's important for him / Real estate just rewardin' him / Generational wealth, when I'm gone, he's still flourishin'.”)
“Then my verse is about the American Dream,” says Jean, who teases that he plans to release a full-length reggae album later this year. “The message is, make sure you are saving and that you start early, so your later years will be much better.”
TIAA Chief Brand Officer Zara Mirza, one of the key people behind the project, hopes that the record helps shock younger generations into action, since 40% of U.S. households currently risk running out of money in retirement, according to the TIAA Institute.
If it continues to stream well, she hints that more music could be on the way. Mirza expects other financial firms might follow suit in trying out more innovative ways to reach Gen Z.
Mirza herself even streams “Paper Right” all the time, as the intro music for all her meetings.
“Just look at the lyrics,” she says. “Every word counts. They’re so meaningful – and really inspiring.”
(This story has been refiled to fix two typos in the 12th and 18th paragraphs)