Rapper Jay-Z said his decision to remain seated during the national anthem at the Super Bowl is being misconstrued.
Video of the rapper and his wife Beyonce showed the couple seated as singer Demi Lovato sang the Star-Spangled Banner on Sunday. Some interpreted their decision not to stand as a political statement, but Jay-Z said that was not his intention.
“It actually wasn’t — sorry,” the 50-year-old music mogul said at a Columbia University lecture series on Tuesday, according to the New York Post.
He said if he’d wanted to make a political statement, “I’d tell you. … I’d say, ‘Yes, that’s what I’ve done.’ I think people know that about me.”
“I didn’t have to make a silent protest,” he added. “If you look at the stage and the artists that we chose — Colombian [Shakira] and Puerto Rican J-Lo — we were making the loudest statement. … And we had … a commercial running [on] social injustice during the Super Bowl. … Given the context, I didn’t have to make a silent protest.”
Jay-Z, whose entertainment company Roc Nation played a role in developing the halftime show, said he was in “artist mode” during the national anthem and didn’t realize he had forgotten to stand.
“What happened was we got there, we were sitting, and now, the show’s about to start. My wife was with me, and so she says to me, ‘I know this feeling right here.’ Like, she’s super nervous because she’s performed at Super Bowls before. I haven’t,” he said. “So we get there, and we immediately jump into artist mode. … Now, I’m really just looking at the show. Did the mic start? Was it too low to start? … I had to explain to them [that] as an artist, if you don’t feel the music, you can’t really reach that level.”
He continued, “So the whole time we’re sitting there, we’re talking about the performance, and then right after that, Demi comes out, and we’re talking about how beautiful she looked and how she sounds and what she’s going through and her life — for her to be on the stage. We were so proud of her. And then it finished, and then my phone rang. And it was like, ‘You know you didn’t.’ I’m like, ‘What?’”
