Jay-Z and Apple CEO Steve Jobs To Start Record Label?

Know what hip-hop mogul Jay-Z and tech industry extraordinaire Steve Jobs have in common? Apparently a record company.

So some in the blogosphere are predicting will be the news later this month, anyway. The Boy Genius Report was one of the first to point out Wednesday the odd indication that a joint venture by the Apple CEO and former head (Pres.) of Def Jam is supposedly set for public debut. Why odd? Primarily because Mr Jobs hasn’t exactly been on sterling terms with a number of the Big Four as of late. And why the guy would further wish to jeopardize relations with such a high-profile musical launch really leaves us rather puzzled. But hey, it’s cool. We’ll deal. It’s not as if we don’t like us a little iControversy now and then. (Feel free to leave your notes of ridicule for our use of that term in the comments below.)

We of course can’t say if we really believe this juicy bit of data being tossed about the Web. It seems a stretch. But we do see how the announcement could carry with it some weight. Macworld Expo ’08, after all, is not two weeks away, and with an hour-plus space to fill with new product and/or service announcements, Papa J could very well cap the – morning? – keynote address with a rollout of a little project with funkmaster J. And by little we mean pretty big.

Not big enough to go head to head with Universal and the rest, of course, but big enough to upset their top-floor execs. Heck, with music artists now talking smack about the hands that feed (too little, according to Radiohead’s Thom Yorke) most every day of the week, we find ample reason to think a stalwart of Jay-Z’s making may just want to fire off against the big suits himself. (Putting aside for the moment the fact that he too is known for his admiration of the classic three-piece.)

And being one to have an affinity for enterprise with influence, Jay-Z may actually view iTunes as something worth dealing with directly.

We’re not going to go so far as to stamp this story with an official confirmation of authenticity, as we may be headed down the wrong road on this one, but we’ll definitely attest to its having some preliminary merit to run on.

Our guess is that, if it proves to be a solid catch, we’ll see it pop up in the pages of The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal sometime next week.

Which is too bad for us. We here in blog land don’t get to break stories of this caliber much at all. It’s either Mossberg or Markoff or Stone or Levy who gets to first chomp at the bit with some official backing. Ah well, let’s hope another one of those darling predictions published here in Profy at the close of ’07 comes to fruition.