Jaÿ-Z albums often come with five-year hiatuses, and guest verses are rare, so when he has something to get off his chest, he turns to his old faithful, a freestyle.
He pulled the stunt on the first night of his three-night Yankee Stadium run, when he seemed to address the backlash over partnering with Target on a special 30th-anniversary Reasonable Doubt release.
Hov rapped that most people’s everyday activities leave them engaging with these same companies and basically accused them of selective outrage.
“You shopping at Amazon, or you boycotting? You posting on Instagram-that’s Meta, boy. Stop it. You know Google owns YouTube. You picking and choosing and politicking, as usual.”
Then, out of nowhere, he inserted Colin Kaepernick.
“They digging deep for narratives, it’s embarrassing, they running outta characters, had to bring back up Kaep again, Buddy took a check, I ain’t even mad at him, but along with that check you have to sign a non-disparagement. I’m the one they can’t control.”
Jay is referring to the 2017 grievance Kaepernick filed against the NFL, accusing it of colluding to keep him out of the league. He withdrew the grievance in 2019 when the two sides reached a confidential agreement and an unspecified settlement.
However, TMZ Sports says that despite Jay’s bars, Kaepernick never actually signed a non-disparagement agreement.
“We’re told no such clause was included in the 2019 deal Colin signed, and there are plenty of receipts to back that up — namely, social media posts where the former QB has remained critical of NFL teams for not hiring him,” writes TMZ.
One source adds that if Kaepernick did sign such a document, he could say disparaging things about the NFL, like counting how many days it’s been since a team hired him.
See social media’s reaction to Jay’s freestyle below.
