Jay-Z, whose last solo album arrived nearly a decade ago at this point, is still relevant as ever. This May he’ll be performing with the Roots as the headliner of their annual Roots Picnic, and in July he’ll be playing three hometown shows at Yankee Stadium: One celebrating the 30th anniversary of his debut album Reasonable Doubt, one for 25 years of The Blueprint, and a newly-announced third “Extra Innings” show that we’re assuming will compile his greatest hits from other albums. Sounds like it’s a good time for Jay to sit down for an interview.
Jay-Z recently sat down for a rare in-depth profile with GQ, where he talked about his various business ventures, fatherhood, and his three decades in the hip-hop industry. Notably, Jay — who became hip-hop’s first billionaire in 2019 — was quick to come to the defense of his fellow billionaires, or at least those who, like him, came from little money. He said:
Your morality is not defined by a dollar amount. And if so, what is that dollar amount? When does it start? If it’s a cutoff like ‘all millionaires are bad,’ at 999,000 I’m good? It can’t be that way. It doesn’t make any sense. I got successful the hard way, in spite of the way the system is set up. Everything was against me. My talent pushed against all the headwinds and I got successful that way. And with that success, I’ve done things with my reach that I wanted to do that was helpful for a lot of people.
And I think that’s most important — the things you believe in, the things you align with. Because a person with more money can do more good. It’s a choice. Again, we’re living in the real world. You can be realistic or idealistic. This is the system that we have. And with the system that we have, what are you going to do?
Earlier on in the interview, Jay-Z talked about being “heartbroken” in 2025, after an anonymous Jane Doe refiled a lawsuit against Sean Combs that alleged he and Jay-Z of raped a 13-year-old girl in 2000. She admitted to inconsistencies in her story shortly thereafter, before dropping the suit in February 2025; Jay-Z then sued her. “I was really heartbroken by everything that occurred,” Jay-Z told GQ. “We’re in a space now where it’s almost like consequence is not thought about enough. Because everything is so instant, you know what I’m saying?”
He continued: “That whole [lawsuit thing], that shit took a lot out of me. I was angry. I haven’t been that angry in a long time, uncontrollable anger. You don’t put that on someone—that’s a thing that you better be super sure. It used to be like that. You had to be super sure before you put those kind of things on a person. Especially a person like me. Even when we were doing the worst things, we had those kind of rules. There was a line: no women, no kids. You hear those sayings, but those are the things that I took from the street.”
Later on, Jay — who’s played a massive role in selecting Super Bowl Half Time Show performers since 2020 — discussed choosing Kendrick Lamar for 2025 on the heels of his beef with Drake. “It’s too far,” Jay said of the sparring. “It’s bringing people’s kids in it. I don’t like that. I sound like the old guy wagging his finger, but I think we can achieve the same thing, as far as sparring with music, with collaborations more so than breaking the whole thing apart… I love the idea that we got so much music in such a short period of time. Just everything around [Drake vs. Kendrick] was like, ‘Man, this is taking us a couple steps back.'”
As for the Super Bowl, Jay went on: “I chose the guy that was having a monster year. I think it was the right choice. What do I care about them two guys battling? What’s that got to do with me? Have at it. They drag everybody in it, like everyone’s part of this conspiracy to undermine Drake, I guess. But, it’s like, what the fuck? I’m fucking Jay-Z!”
Jay also briefly discussed his relationship with J. Cole, who was Roc Nation’s first signee in 2009 before founding his own label Dreamville. “[Roc Nation is] making corrections on the fly, but we have a lot of information, a lot of codes that we want to share,” he said. “Things that took us 30 years to accomplish, hopefully take the next person 10, five.” He went on to explain that he doesn’t like having a heavy hand in guiding his artists creatively. “The narrative is that we didn’t love Cole. No, we believed in him enough to let him find his journey. It took him a minute, but he found his way… I was giving him a chance to take his talent and show it to the most people possible, but his way.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Jay-Z also talked about not being featured on the new Clipse album, his daughter’s musical prowess, and whether or not he’s been writing new music lately. Read it here.