Jay Electronica appeared out of nowhere to come to the defense of one of his mentors amid the outrage that Kendrick Lamar was chosen for the Super Bowl Halftime Show in New Orleans over Lil Wayne.
After Lamar announced that he would be the headliner for the biggest televised event of the year, people wanted to find someone to blame for the Powers That Be not picking Wayne, who is from New Orleans. Everyone collectively pointed the finger at Jay-Z and Roc Nation, since they’ve been in a partnership with the NFL since August 2019.
Even Nicki Minaj got in on the action and went on a long-winded rant on X.
But on Wednesday, Jay Electronica had enough of the disrespect, and called out everyone who was critical of Jay-Z in a post that read, “N****s got all this smoke for Hov but they ain’t got no smoke for David Geffen and jimmy iovine and lucían grange and lyor cohen etcetera etcetera. I DO NOT RESPECT YOUR GANGSTER. You p***y.”
He later added, “And how yall so quick to let yall gun bust at your brother over nothing. If yall would put 10 percent of this negative energy over a FOOTBALL game into unifying for one common cause, our ppl would be free overnight. Salaaam Alaikum.”
Jay-Z was a prominent presence on Jay Electronica’s (extremely) long-awaited 2020 debut album “A Written Testimony,” which was released on the former’s Roc Nation imprint. Hov has verses on seven of the album’s 10 tracks
But Electronica wasn’t the only one with something to say about the controversy: Fat Joe also came to Hov’s defense during an Instagram Live on Tuesday.
“Years ago, the beef with the NFL was that Black people wasn’t represented and they were doing us wrong, even though we were the talent, whatever the case,” Joe said. “But then they brought JAY-Z and Roc Nation to do the shows and they brought out Dr. Dre, Eminem, everybody, number one ratings, Rihanna—they killing it.”
“So now, of course, the hip-hop community likes to attack the hip-hop. Yeah, Jay-Z’s a big voice but, you know, he gotta go through the NFL ranks, the Roger Goodells, everything like that, so they can come up with who’s performing at halftime,” he continued. “It ain’t just one man’s decision—that I know of. So to just go to blame [one] man…”
Joe summed up his point by saying that if there was no Jay-Z, there wouldn’t be any hip-hop at the Super Bowl.