Credit: Alamy

Jay-Z may be a board member at Block, Inc., the tech company founded by Jack Dorsey in 2009, but his name is mysteriously no longer allowed to be mentioned by employees. Fortune reports that executives have issued “stern warnings” to staffers about not discussing Hov across company forums such as email or Slack for reasons unknown.

Information regarding the new Jay-Z rule apparently came from three employees who requested their identities be anonymous because they aren’t permitted to speak about corporate matters.

The bizarre news comes after Block, Inc. just recently laid off dozens of staff members from TIDAL’s team, with further cuts expected to take place across TIDAL and other Block entities that include Square and Cash App. In an email to staff about the TIDAL cuts, Dorsey stated the company needed to “build like a startup again.”

Jay-Z is one of nine board members at Block, Inc. and has been since 2021 when Block acquired a majority stake in TIDAL, the streaming platform owned by Hov. Square paid $297 million in cash and stock for TIDAL, with Jay and other artists who own stock in Tidal, remaining stakeholders.

It’s unclear whether Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey are still on good terms. During a conversation on Twitter Spaces in 2021, the pair explained why their partnership made sense.

“I think we were aligned in our conversation, and viewing artists and creatives as small businesses and treating each individual artist as a business,” Jay said. “And the things that Square and Cash App were doing is pretty much aligned with what one does with their own brand. You create a business, take out a small loan, get the things you need to help you be successful and build it out from there. So our conversations just naturally aligned.”

Dorsey added, “We started talking a year ago now and saw so many parallels. I’d tell you stories about our work around helping small businesses — most of the financial industry is working against them. And in conversation it just became so apparent that there were so many parallels in spirit because of what a musician and a small business is going through.”

As of last year, Block, Inc. had served 56million users and 4million businesses, processing $228billion in annual payments.