After footage surfaced of Jay-Z and Beyoncé remaining seated during the national anthem at the Super Bowl, several fans and foes made assumptions about what not standing meant. Jay-Z let a group of Columbia University students know Tuesday it wasn’t what they thought.
The TMZ video shows the hip-hop super couple and 8-year-old daughter Blue Ivy sitting as Demi Lovato belts out the national anthem before the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers took to the field Sunday in Miami.
Not standing for the musical American treasure is typically considered uncouth. Some took Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s dismissal of the honorary standing as a protest of some sort, likened to the kneeling done by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
During a discussion Tuesday at Columbia, Jay-Z said his family not standing was not a protest or an effort to convey any message, according to NBC News.
The rapper, who was the co-producer of the halftime show after his Roc Nation company partnered with the NFL, explained that he and his wife transformed into “artist mode” while witnessing Lovato’s performance and Yolanda Adams’ rendition of “America the Beautiful.”
“I’m looking at the show. ‘Did the mic start? Was it too low to start? '" he said.
“The whole time we’re sitting there, we’re talking about the performance. Then right after that, Demi comes out, and we’re talking about how beautiful she looks and how she sounds and what she’s gone through in her life for her to be on the stage,” he continued. “We’re so proud of her.”
The Grammy-winning producer and rapper said he would not have involved his child in protesting if that’s what he intended to do. The selection of artists for the halftime show, two Latinx superstars, was protest enough, he told the audience.
“I didn’t have to make a silent protest. If you look at the stage, the artists that we chose, Colombian Shakira, Puerto Rican J-Lo. We were making the biggest loudest protest of all,” he said.
Jay-Z has experienced some pushback from fans when he announced last year he would have a partnership with the NFL. Those who supported Kaepernick’s efforts to protest police brutality and disapproved of the NFL’s treatment of the former quarterback found issue with Jay-Z doing business with the league.
The NFL invited Kaepernick to return to the league, with a publicized workout with a number of teams in Atlanta last fall. However, no teams offered the former Super Bowl contender a spot on their teams.
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