Beyonce Celebrates Magna Carta's Platinum Status With Early Throwback Thursday Photo

Jay Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail finally dropped today, and naturally, Queen B had to celebrate in style. It might be a day too early for Throwback Thursday, but that didn’t stop Beyonce from instagramming an adorable snap from the rapper’s not-so-recent past. The picture, captioned “Platinum #MagnaCarta” shows Mr Carter before he became Jay Z. In the schoolboy photo, the rapper to be sports a hilarious adorable blue cap and gown.

Clearly, a lot has changed.

The caption was quite apropos, considering that on Tuesday, the same day that brought the full release of Magna Carta, the album reached platinum status. According to New York Daily News, the album reached platinum status thanks to digital sales from Jay-Z’s deal with Samsung. The company reportedly purchased five million albums, to give away to Galaxy users, who download the Samsung Jay-Z app. Because of this marketing technique, however, the Recording Industry Association of America has had to redefine how it counts album sales in order to include the digital purchases. It wasn’t all celebration, though. While the RIAA counted the albums and even posted a picture of Jay-Z holding the commemorative plaque on their Facebook page, the folks over at Billboard were not as impressed.

Even the RIAA had to concede to Mr Carter.

“Our role as the chart of record is to set the rules, and hopefully even raise the level of play,” Bill Werde, Billboard magazine’s editorial director, said. “It is in this spirit that I say it wasn’t as simple as you might think to turn down Jay-Z when he requested that we count the million albums that Samsung ‘bought’ as part of a much larger brand partnership, to give away to Samsung customers.”

Guess Jay-Z will have to somehow console himself with the $5 million he made off the Samsung deal.

Jay Z will have to console himself with the millions he made off the Samsung deal. Somehow.