Jay-Z and Beyonce found themselves in a bit of controversy after the Super Bowl after video showed The Carters seated during Demi Lovato’s rendition of the national anthem on Sunday. The video drew enough of a reaction to grab Colin Kaepernick’s attention who reposted an Instagram story that captured a screenshot of the video on TMZ with the caption “I thought we were ‘past kneeling’ tho?” Well according to Jay-Z, this wasn’t a protest at all.
According to TMZ, Jay-Z was asked about the possibility of his family’s seating being a political protest at a recent Q&A at Columbia University to which he responded, “It actually wasn’t. Sorry.”
He continued by explaining that at first he and Beyonce were discussing the number of things Lovato could have been going through as she took the stage to sing the anthem. He then got into “artist mode” and became extremely focused on the technical aspect of Lovato’s performance.
“So I’m really just looking at the show. Did the mic start? Was it too low to start?” Jay-Z asked. “Is there too many speakers on the floor?” All in all, it seems like The Carters were too distracted to realize that they had sat through the anthem. During the Q&A, Jay-Z also shared that a political protest in Blue Ivy’s presence would never happen because he would not want to “put her in the kind of position.”
“And if anyone knows Blue … If we told her we were going to do something like that, you would’ve seen her tapping me a hundred times …” he said. “She would say, ‘What time? Are we doing it? Are we doing now? Are we doing it now?'”
Jay-Z claimed that the “loudest protest of all” was not his sitting but the diverse selection of artists he chose to perform at the game.
