Jay-Z isn’t here for any talk pitting two icons—namely his wife Beyoncé and protégé Rihanna—against each other.
He reportedly made that stance clear to sports commentator Stephen A. Smith after the Smith shared somewhat less than enthusiastic comments about Rih’s then-upcoming Super Bowl Halftime Show performance saying “she ain’t no Beyoncé.”
“I don’t want to say I’m not excited. She’s fantastic. That’s not where I’m going with this. She’s a lot of things. She’s spectacular. And congratulations on new mama-hood. There’s one thing she’s not. She AIN’T Beyoncé,” Stephen said as previously reported by The Root at in Jan. 2023. “The only reason I brought up Beyoncé is because Beyoncé recently performed at the Super Bowl. And without Bruno Mars and Coldplay.”
Now, the popular sports personality is revealing how those comments spawned a convo between him and Hov.
“A month later, Hov and I were on the phone,” he said on the “Connect the Dots” podcast on Monday. “Hov was like, ‘My dawg, you family, that’s family. That’s too close to say that.’ I said, ‘I didn’t know.’ He said, ‘I know.’ Done! In other words, it’s a business, it’s a part of it, you don’t know how she’ll receive it, etc. etc. etc. That’s all he had to say. I appreciated that.”
Good for Jay for standing up for Black women! It’s the year of our Lord 2024, whether or not your a Beyhive member or a part of the Rihanna Navy—it’s beyond time to stop with the comparisons between these two. They’re both amazing; they’re both hella talented, and they both have done amazing exploits and become legends in their own right.
Let’s celebrate that!