Jay-Z takes on worldwide water crisis
The rapper will bring awareness to the public with a MTV documentary.
Rap star Jay-Z plans to show the impact of the international water crisis by visiting locations around the world and documenting the tour for an MTV show, it was announced Wednesday.
"The Diary of Jay-Z: Water For Life" will show the Def Jam Records head meeting with people in different countries and speaking to them about the water problems, said MTV President Christina Norman.
"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," Jay-Z said. "It took very little, very little to see these numbers."
At a news conference held at the U.N. headquarters, Jay-Z revealed 1.1 billion people around the world live without clean drinking water, while 2.6 billion suffer with unsanitary conditions.
"I figure that once I stumbled upon that, 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," he said.
The rapper plans to install 1,000 "play pumps" throughout Africa, which will pump water into storage wells. He also hopes to spread awareness of the crisis to adults by informing children.
Jay-Z's international tour begins Sept. 9.
