Jay-Z denied that he and his wife Beyonce were making a political statement by sitting through the national anthem during the Super Bowl on Feb. 2.
During a Columbia University Question and Answer event on Tuesday, Jay-Z was asked by the moderator if he was sitting during the national anthem “to convey a signal.”
“It actually wasn’t — sorry,” he said, adding, “I’d tell you … I’d say, ‘Yes, that’s what I’ve done.’ I think people know that about me.”
Instead, he said the couple — who co-produced the event’s entertainment — was focused on making sure everything went smoothly.
“So we get there, and we immediately jump into artist mode … now I’m really just looking at the show. Did the mic start? Was it too low to start? … I had to explain to them as an artist, if you don’t feel the music, you can’t really reach that level.”
Additionally, he said he was surprised when he saw people were suggesting that he was sitting to make a statement.
“So the whole time we’re sitting there, we’re talking about the performance, and then right after that, Demi comes out, and we’re talking about how beautiful she looked, and how she sounds and what she’s going through, and her life — for her to be on the stage, we were so proud of her. And then it finished and then my phone rang. And it was like, ‘You know you didn’t…’ I’m like, ‘What?'”
He noted that his eight-year-old daughter, Blue, was there and said he wouldn’t try to make a political statement with her there.
“Blue was right next to us; we wouldn’t do that to Blue and put her in that position. And if anyone who knows Blue … If we told her we were going to do something like that, you would have seen her attacking me 100 times,” he said.
Jay-Z and Beyonce were seen sitting through the national anthem before the Super Bowl on Sunday, which led some to suggest they were trying to make a statement.
However, Jay-Z said that between the messages of the commercials and halftime show, “I didn’t have to make a silent protest.”