Less than a year ago, Jay-Z reportedly tried to talk Travis Scott out of performing during the Super Bowl halftime show over the NFL’s treatment of Colin Kaepernick, but it appears the rap legend and mogul has decided to try and work with the league, both in the music space and in pushing the NFL in its social activism campaign.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the NFL had a partnership with Roc Nation and Jay-Z that will make Hov the new “live music entertainment strategist” for the league, giving him a hand in picking artists for the Super Bowl halftime show and more. He will also “contribute” to the NFL’s activism campaign, Inspire Change, with Hov pointing to the league’s reach as an opportunity to do some good.
“The N.F.L. has a great big platform, and it has to be all-inclusive,” Jay-Z said in an interview this week. “They were willing to do some things, to make some changes, that we can do some good.”
The announcement will be made official on Wednesday, and it will be very interesting to see how Jay-Z addresses his role in the partnership and how he plans to affect change in how the league approaches social justice, activism, and protest, given how poorly they dealt with all of that when Colin Kaepernick began kneeling in protest during the national anthem. It was last December that he was apparently trying to talk Scott into canceling his performance, so we’ll have to see what he feels changed to convince him to join the league in an official capacity.
