Hip hop mogul Jay-Z has reportedly turned down an offer to perform at February’s Super Bowl halftime show, it was learned on Friday
Hip hop mogul Jay-Z has reportedly turned down an offer to perform at February’s Super Bowl halftime show, it was learned on Friday.
The rapper whose birth name is Sean Carter has declined the invite, a rarity in the entertainment world given the fact that the Super Bowl is one of the most watched events of the year.
News of Jay-Z’s decision was first reported by The Source.
Football’s big game is scheduled to take place February 4 at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
There is speculation that Jay-Z turned the NFL down in a show of solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback.
Kaepernick has been a source of controversy over the past year because of his public act of protesting police brutality against minorities by kneeling during the national anthem at the start of his team’s football games.
He is currently without an NFL contract, which some say is the result of the league ostracizing him because of his political views.
The rapper whose birth name is Sean Carter has declined the invite, a rarity in the entertainment world given the fact that the Super Bowl is one of the most watched events of the year. He is seen above performing during a concert in Queens, New York last Friday
The NFL commissioner, Rogert Goodell, denies that teams are intentionally shunning Kaepernick because of politics, according to Luke Jones.
At a concert in New York last week, Jay-Z paid homage to Kaepernick.
The Brooklyn rapper kicked off the first of three days of the Meadows Music and Arts Festival at Citi Field in Queens, performing a 90-minute set that included his well-known songs as well as political moments.
‘I want to dedicate this song to Colin Kaepernick tonight,’ Jay-Z said of The Story of OJ, a song about blackness and managing money that also references OJ Simpson.
There is speculation that Jay-Z turned the NFL down in a show of solidarity with Colin Kaepernick (center), the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who generated controversy for kneeling during the national anthem to protest police violence
‘I want to dedicate this to Dick Gregory. I want to dedicate this song to anyone that was held back and you overcame,’ he added about the song from his personal and revealing album, 4:44.
Gregory, who died last month, was a comedian and activist who broke racial barriers in the 1960s and used his humor to spread messages of social justice and nutritional health.
At the Super Bowl earlier this year, Lady Gaga was the headline performer in Houston.
Jay-Z’s wife, Beyonce, already has two Super Bowl halftime performances under her belt.
Jay-Z’s wife, Beyonce, already has two Super Bowl halftime performances under her belt. In 2016, her appearance at the halftime show in Santa Clara, California (above), created buzz because of her political statements in support of Black Lives Matter
She was the headline act at the big game in New Orleans in 2013 – a game which Kaepernick coincidentally played in for the losing team, the 49ers.
In 2016, Beyonce also made an appearance at the halftime show, though this time her act generated headlines for her political statements in support of Black Lives Matter.
The multi-platinum singer and her backup performers also made reference to Malcolm X and were dressed as Black Panthers.
Though there’s no official confirmation from Jay-Z’s camp that his decision not to play the Super Bowl was a political statement in support of Kaepernick, the entertainer is already drawing praise from public figures.
‘I’m not surprised by that at all and I’m actually glad that people are using their platform in this way,’ Jason Sole, the president of the NAACP Minneapolis, told Fox 9 TV.