Jay-Z Revisits New Album’s Lyrics About Jews In NYT Interview
Jay-Z performing at the Barclays Center in November. Image by Getty Images
By Ari Feldman November 30, 2017
Jay-Z revisited his suggestive — and somewhat ambiguous — lyrics about Jews from his latest album in an interview with the New York Times.
Responding to those who called the lyrics anti-Semitic, Jay-Z called that reaction “hypocritical.”
“Only because it’s obvious the song is, like, ‘Do you want to be rich? Do what people got rich done,’” Jay-Z told the Times’ executive editor Dean Baquet.
On this year’s “4:44,” on the track “Story of O.J.,” Jay-Z rapped:
You wanna know what’s more important than throwin’ away money at a strip club?
Credit.
You ever wonder why Jewish people own all the property in America?
This how they did it.
At the time of the album’s release, a representative for the ADL said “the lyric does seem to play into deep-seated anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews and money.”
Jay-Z added that the backlash was “hypocritical” because the song, and the music video for it, make allusions to stereotypes about black people, and his critics did not call him out for employing those stereotypes.
“[I]f you didn’t have a problem with the general statement I made about black people, and people eating watermelon and things like that — if that was fine, [but] that line about wealth bothered you, then that’s very hypocritical,” he said.
“You can’t miss the context of the song,” he added. “You have to be like 5 years old or something.”
Contact Ari Feldman at feldman@forward.com or on Twitter @aefeldman
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
