It’s not every day you hear from legendary rapper Jay-Z, but the world got an earful on Tuesday thanks to an all-new, rare interview. And trust us when we say, you’ll want to hear what he has to say—especially when it comes to Sean “Diddy” Combs and the shocking lawsuit lobbed against both music moguls in 2024.
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If you’ll remember, we told you about how the “Reasonable Doubt” rapper and Combs were sued in a civil lawsuit by a Jane Doe in December 2024, who alleged that the two men raped her after the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards when she was just 13 years old.
After Jay’s legal team noted several inconsistencies within Doe’s story, they filed a countersuit for emotional distress and defamation against Doe and her lawyer, Tony Buzbee. Later, an audio recording leaked in which Doe allegedly admitted to giving a false accusation of Jay—the suit was dropped in February 2025.
Now, over one year later, Jay-Z is opening up about the suit in an all-new, wide-ranging interview for GQ Magazine published on Tuesday. In it, he reflected on that “heartbreaking” time, explaining how the suit caused him to have “uncontrollable anger” as it went against everything he stood for.
“That whole Buzbee [lawsuit thing], that sh*t took a lot out of me. 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,” Jay said. “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. 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.”
He continued, “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.”
Later, he explained that the lawsuit was so troublesome, he had to preemptively warn his business partners and associates that something was coming down the pike and it was unavoidable. Jay also explained why he decided not to take a settlement, saying that he “would die” if he took that route because it wasn’t “in his DNA.”
“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. If I settled—make that thing go away. And for me, it would’ve been cheaper? Yes. Cheaper, quicker, move on with your life,” Jay shared. “I knew what was coming. I wasn’t naive. I called—again, after my family—my partners. They were like, ‘What do you need to help? Don’t even worry.’”
Jay continued, adding that the people who knew him best remained by his side.
“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?’”
In perhaps one of the more tender moments of the interview, Jay also shared that the news about the suit dropped the same day his eldest daughter, Blue Ivy, had her big movie premiere for “The Lion King.” Despite what people may have expected, he showed up on the carpet and took pictures with her and Bey as a united front.
Later, in a move that brought tears to his eyes, the “On to the Next One” rapper revealed that the young teen voluntarily wore a jersey with his name on it to school around that time as a form of support.
“Our family, we are a tight unit. Blue has this jersey with ‘Jay-Z’ on the back. She put it on one day. She went to school with the “’Jay,’” he explained. “I was just in the corner, like tears coming down. Seriously. To have that, it’s priceless. People can say that [they’ll always be there for you], but it’s very rare that you’re going to have to exercise it. And in the darkest moment for me, I got to see those sorts of things.”
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