Jay-Z Explains Why He & Beyonce Sat During the National Anthem at Super Bowl 2020

Jay-Z is explaining why he stayed seated with his wife Beyonce at the Super Bowl during the National Anthem, which caused some mixed reactions and headlines.

The 50-year-old entrepreneur spoke out at a Q&A at Columbia University during a lecture on Tuesday night (February 4) in New York City.

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When he was asked if staying seated was “meant to convey a signal,” he said: “It actually wasn’t — sorry. I’d tell you … I’d say, ‘Yes, that’s what I’ve done.’ I think people know that about me,” he said.

“What happened was, we got there, we were sitting, and now the show’s about to start. My wife was with me and so she says to me, ‘I know this feeling right here.’ Like, she’s super-nervous because she’s performed at Super Bowls before. I haven’t. 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 [that] as an artist, if you don’t feel the music, you can’t really reach that level,” he went on to explain.

“So the whole time we’re sitting there, we’re talking about the performance, and then right after that, Demi [Lovato] 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 also said he wouldn’t have planned to make a purposeful statement with his daughter, Blue Ivy, right there.

“Blue [Ivy] 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. She’s the kid that gets in the car and closes the door and says, ‘Are we there yet, daddy?’ So she would say, ‘What time? Are we doing it? Are we doing it now? It’s 7:05, daddy…it’s 7:06.’”

“I didn’t have to make a silent protest…if you look at the stage and the artists that we chose — Columbian [Shakira] and Puerto Rican J.Lo — we were making the loudest statement…and we had…a commercial running [on] social injustice during the Super Bowl … Given the context, I didn’t have to make a silent protest.”

Jennifer Lopez made it clear that she was sending a message with her performance. Here’s what she said…