{"id":345864,"date":"2026-03-24T20:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T20:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/345864\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T20:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T20:16:08","slug":"jay-z-on-refusing-to-settle-sexual-assault-lawsuit-i-cant-do-it-i-would-die-jay-z","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/345864\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay-Z on refusing to settle sexual assault lawsuit: \u2018I can\u2019t do it, I would die\u2019 | Jay-Z"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jay-Z<\/a> has spoken out about his recent sexual assault lawsuit in a new interview.<\/p>\n

The suit alleged<\/a> that Jay-Z and Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs<\/a> raped a a 13-year-old girl at a party in 2000. Combs and Jay-Z denied all allegations after the lawsuit was filed in late 2024, and the case was voluntarily dismissed in February 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was hard,\u201d Jay-Z told GQ<\/a>. \u201cReally hard. I was heartbroken. We\u2019re in a space now where it\u2019s almost like consequence is not thought about enough. Because everything is so instant, you know what I\u2019m saying?\u201d<\/p>\n

The rapper continued: \u201cI was angry. I haven\u2019t been that angry in a long time, uncontrollable anger. You don\u2019t put that on someone \u2013 that\u2019s a thing that you better be super sure [about]. It used to be like that. You had to be super sure before you put those kind of things on a person.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a lengthy four-hour conversation, Jay-Z<\/a> explained why he chose to fight the lawsuit rather than settle with the Jane Doe accuser.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t take a settlement \u2013 it ain\u2019t in my DNA,\u201d he said. \u201cFirst of all, first I had to tell my wife<\/a>. Let\u2019s back up. I know the weight that this is going to bring on our family. I can\u2019t do it. I would die.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I settled \u2026 it would\u2019ve been cheaper? Yes. Cheaper, quicker, move on with your life. I knew what was coming. I wasn\u2019t naive. I called \u2013 again, after my family \u2013 my partners. They were like, \u2018What do you need to help? Don\u2019t even worry.\u2019 In a phone call. Not even a: \u2018I got to go to the board with this.\u2019 It was like a testament because people know me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuit claimed that an unnamed girl was drugged and raped by both Jay-Z and Combs at a party after the MTV music awards in 2000. Jay-Z blasted the assault allegations when they first emerged<\/a> in late 2024, calling them a \u201cblackmail attempt\u201d. His attorney Alex Spiro lambasted the claims as \u201cprovably, demonstrably false\u201d, adding that they relied on an \u201cimpossible timeline\u201d.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the interview, Jay-Z reflected on the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Speaking of hip-hop culture, he said, \u201cWe love the excitement and I love the sparring, but in this day and age there\u2019s so much negative stuff that comes with it that you almost wish it didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s helpful to our growth where the fallout lands, especially on social media,\u201d the musician added. \u201cIt\u2019s too far. It\u2019s bringing people\u2019s kids in it. I don\u2019t like that. I sound like the old guy wagging his finger, but I think we can achieve the same thing, as far as sparring with music, with collaborations more so than breaking the whole thing apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jay-Z also discussed what he called the right wing\u2019s anti-hip hop agenda: \u201cThere is clearly an agenda to silence voices in our community, a heavy rightwing agenda. And the culture is happily playing along in the name of this insane thirst of Stan culture to have something on the other side. We are in a strange time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rapper sat for the GQ interview to commemorate 30 years of his debut album Reasonable Doubt. This July, he will perform two shows at New York\u2019s Yankee Stadium dedicated to Reasonable Doubt and its follow up, 2001\u2019s The Blueprint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jay-Z has spoken out about his recent sexual assault lawsuit in a new interview. The suit alleged that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-345864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}