Jay-Z has finally spoken out about his infamous clash with sister-in-law Solange after the Met Gala in 2014, a savage elevator brawl that spawned a thousand memes, guest verses and Saturday Night Live sketches.
A widely-shared video that emerged in the wake of the incident showed Solange being restrained by a bodyguard as she threw kicks and punches at Jay, as Beyoncé looked on, before eventually stepping in between the pair.
Bey later alluded to the incident in her ‘Flawless‘ remix, while Jay himself appeared to offer an apology on his track ‘Kill Jay Z‘, but nobody in the family had publicly commented until this week, when he spoke to Rap Radar, addressing a number of past and present issues.
“We’ve always had a great relationship,” Jay told hosts Elliott Wilson and Brian Miller when asked about the fateful night of his confrontation with Solange. He continued:
I fought my brothers and argued with my brothers my whole life. It just so happens, who we are, these things go into a different space, but it ain’t nothing. We’ve had one disagreement. Before and after, we’ve been cool. That’s my sister. Not my sister-in-law, no, my sister. Period.
When asked about the commonly-held assertion that at least three great albums came out of the incident, Jay replied:
I think we went into that elevator great artists. That doesn’t surprise me. I’ve always loved Solange’s music; I thought she was slept on until this last album. I think Bey made an incredible album before, a hundred of them.
He also addressed his infamous Kanye West dig on 4:44, admitting that he was angry at his friend for bringing up issues with his family on stage:
It’s not even about Kanye, it really isn’t. His name is there, just because it’s just the truth of what happened. But the whole point is, ‘You got hurt because this person was talking about you on a stage.’ But what really hurt me was – you can’t bring my kids and my wife into it. Kanye’s my little brother. He’s talked about me 100 times. He made a song called ‘Big Brother.’ We’ve gotten past bigger issues. But you brought my family into it, now it’s a problem with me. That’s a real, real problem.
And he knows it’s a problem. He knows that he crossed the line. I know him. He knows. I know he knows, because we’ve never let this much space go between one of our disagreements, and we’ve had many, because that’s who we are. That’s what I like about him. He’s an honest person, he’s open and he’ll say things and he’s wrong a lot of times and he’ll confront it.
Jay-Z has since posted the whole hour-long interview on Tidal.
