Jay Z Turned Down Super Bowl Halftime Show For a Good Reason

Anyone else watch the Super Bowl this past weekend?

Weren't the performances so freaking good?!

Now imagine if Jay Z was performing!

He wouldn't be, based on principle.

This past weekend The New York Times published an interview with the legend himself to speak on the Super Bowl:

Why are Roc Nation and the N.F.L. doing business this Super Bowl weekend? Well, social justice is expensive.

A few years ago, the National Football League approached Jay-Z about performing at the Super Bowl halftime show. To perform “Run This Town,” he was asked if he would bring Rihanna and Kanye West, who appear on the track, along with him.

“Of course I would have,” Jay-Z said, “but I said, ‘No, you getme.’ That is not how you go about it, telling someone that they’re going to do the halftime show contingent on who they bring. I said forget it. It was a principle thing.”

“The problem with the N.F.L. is you all think hip-hop is still a fad when hip-hop has been the dominant music form around the world for 20 years,” Jay-Z said to him.

And it came off, at best, as ignorance from a league of 32 teams, only two of which are owned by people of color, employing 28 white head coaches, and an athletic labor force that is more than 70 percent black.