It must be nice to be able to go from being a violent drug dealer who once shot his own brother to billionaire and publicly show that you think you’re still oppressed. It’s either that or extreme ignorance.
Rapper/mogul Jay-Z and his wife, singer/actress Beyonce, attended Super Bowl LIV on Sunday night with their child and all three stayed seated during singer Demi Lovato’s national anthem performance.
I don’t blame the kid. She was just doing the same as her parents were doing, so let’s leave the kid out of it.
Before I get into my thoughts on the pair, take a look at them sitting:
However, Jay-Z and Beyonce are hypocrites.
Jay-Z signed a big deal with the NFL last August to “enhance the NFL’s live game experiences and to amplify the league’s social justice efforts,” according to NFL.com. While the 50-year-old hip-hop mogul believes that still unemployed quarterback Colin Kaepernick “was done wrong,” he has publicly said that we've gotten to the point that people need to do more than just protest.
If that’s the case, why did he sit?
As for the “Queen B,” the 38-year-old diva sang the anthem at Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004, former president Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2013, and at a Super Bowl halftime show press conference, also in 2013.
When interviewed about her “lip-synched” performance of the anthem at Obama’s inauguration, Beyonce said she practices “until my feet bleed,” but couldn’t be bothered to stand during someone else’s performance. But since Beyonce was the one to give Kaepernick the 2017 Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year, despite him not playing a single snap during the 2017 season, here we are.
“Thank you for your personal sacrifice. Colin took action with no fear of consequence or repercussion — only hope to change the world for the better, to change perception, to change the way we treated each other, especially people of color,” Beyonce said in 2017, as reported by the Daily Wire. “We are still waiting for the world to catch up.”
Sure, black people are treated so poorly that both Jay-Z and Beyonce become, separately, two of the wealthiest entertainers of all-time. Give me a break.
If it weren’t for the opportunity afforded to everyone in this country, the both of them wouldn’t be where they are today.
I’m a big hip-hop fan — more 2005 and before than current rap, which is mostly mumble-rap. I can admit that Jay-Z over the years had been a very talented rapper, and Beyonce can definitely carry a tune. However, Jay-Z and Beyonce got to where they are in the music industry because their talents were packaged well with marketing. It doesn’t matter that they’re black. If the U.S. is so racist, where did all their white, asian and hispanic fans come from?