Jay-Z explains why he refused to settle sexual assault lawsuit
Jay-Z has explained why he was 'really heartbroken by everything that occurred' in 2025.
The billionaire rap mogul, 56, told GQ that the 'whole [lawsuit thing] took a lot out of me' after it alleged that he and Sean 'Diddy' Combs raped a 13-year-old girl at a party in 2000.
Both Jay-Z and Combs denied all of the allegations in 2024 and the lawsuit was dismissed in February of last year.
"It was hard. Really hard," the father-of-three - whose real name is Shawn Carter - said.
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"I was angry. I haven’t been that angry in a long time, uncontrollable anger.
"You don’t put that on someone—that’s a thing that you better be super sure. It used to be like that.
"You had to be super sure before you put those kind of things on a person. Especially a person like me."
He added: "Even when we were doing the worst things, we had those kind of rules. There was a line: no women, no kids.
"You hear those sayings, but those are the things that I took from the street. We lived and died by that.
"So it’s strict for me, like it meant a lot to me. I took that really hard.
"I knew that we were going to walk through that because, first of all, it’s not true. And the truth, at the end of the day, still reigns supreme."
The husband of pop icon Beyoncé said he 'needed the people around me more than ever because usually when I have that feeling, I would just make music and it would be therapeutic'.
"So when those types of things happen, people run, they don’t care what happened. It’s like, save yourself," he continued.
"So I have partners I’ve had big deals with. I called my guy from LVMH: “Hey, man, this is coming and I can’t get rid of it.
"I can’t take a settlement—it ain’t in my DNA. First of all, first I had to tell my wife.
"Let’s back up. I know the weight that this is going to bring on our family. I can’t do it. I would die."
Jay-Z went on to say that 'it would have been cheaper' had he settled.
"Yes. Cheaper, quicker, move on with your life. I knew what was coming. I wasn’t naive," he added.
"I called—again, after my family—my partners. They were like, 'What do you need to help? Don’t even worry.
"In a phone call. Not even a 'I got to go to the board with this'. It was like a testament because people know me.
"Like, 'I know who you are and that’s impossible. Not only are we standing by you, but what do you need?'"
Anish Vij