Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for Something in the Water
Ahead of Sunday night’s Super Bowl LIV, JAY-Z sat down with The New York Times for a wide-ranging interview about his involvement with the league. During the conversation, he revealed that he rejected an offer to be the Super Bowl Halftime Show performer because the league asked him to bring out Kanye West and Rihanna, too.
“Of course I would have,” Jay-Z revealed, “but I said, ‘No, you get me.’ 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.”
According to The Times‘ Katherine Rosman, the league wanted all three artists to perform “Run This Town,” the hit single from Jay’s 2009 album, The Blueprint 3. Although the song dropped over a decade ago, the article does not specify when he was asked to perform.
Last year, Rihanna revealed that she turned down an offer to perform at the show in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. “For what? Who gains from that? Not my people,” Rihanna told Vogue. “I just couldn’t be a sellout. I couldn’t be an enabler. There’s things within that organization that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go and be of service to them in any way.”
That same year, JAY-Z reportedly tried to talk Travis Scott out of performing alongside Maroon 5. This year, Jay’s Roc Nation partnered with the NFL to co-produce the halftime show, which featured Shakira and Jennifer Lopez as co-headliners.
Read JAY-Z’s full New York Times interview here and catch up on all the lyrics to his biggest hits on Genius now.
