In a recent interview with GQ, Jay-Z discussed his feelings after being sued for $3xual a$$ault and gave an explanation for why he refused to settle the case.
When Jane Doe filed a lawsuit in 2024, claiming that Jay and Sean “Diddy” Combs $3xually a$daulted her at a VMAs afterparty in 2000 when she was 13 years old, the rapper claimed he experienced “uncontrollable anger.”
Both Jay and Diddy vehemently refuted the accusations, and they ultimately filed a malicious prosecution and defamation lawsuit against Jane and her attorney, Tony Buzbee.
Jay’s lawsuit was dismissed a few months after Jane’s was eventually dropped last year.
Speaking on it publicly for the first time, Jay said the ordeal “took a lot out of” him and made him angrier than he’d been “in a long time.”
He continued: “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. 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 di£d by that. So it’s strict for me, like it meant a lot to me.”
While the rap mogul said he could’ve quickly settled the suit, a move that would’ve been both “cheaper” and “quicker,” he explained bluntly, “I can’t take a settlement — it ain’t in my DNA… I can’t do it. I would di£.”
Jay said he “needed the people around me more than ever” to overcome the anger he felt, especially because it didn’t feel right to channel those emotions to the place he usually would: music.
“I’m not sure with the amount of negativity in the world that people needed me to add to that with my feelings — because it would have been harsh, and it would have been harsh on everybody,” he said. “I don’t know how to make music that’s not reflective of how I’m feeling at the moment…. I had to be real and honest to my experiences at the moment. It would have been fiery.”