Jay-Z Helped the NFL Banish Colin Kaepernick

Yesterday the hip-hop mogul Jay-Z and National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell held a joint media session at the Roc Nation offices in New York to seal a once-implausible partnership that isn’t being received as positively as both parties probably hoped.

I assume neither Goodell nor Jay-Z expected to be on the defensive once the NFL announced that it would give Roc Nation, the music mogul’s entertainment company, significant power in choosing the performers for the league’s signature events—including the coveted Super Bowl halftime show. Jay-Z and Roc Nation will also help augment the NFL’s social-justice initiatives by developing content and spaces where players can speak about the issues that concern them.

This wasn’t just another routine example of Jay-Z living out a lyric he’d rapped nearly 15 years ago—“I’m not a businessman. I’m a business, man!” Instead, the rapper faced questions yesterday about why he chose to collaborate with the same league that he’d publicly criticized for its. On his megahit song “Apeshit,” Jay-Z rapped this lyric: “Once I said no to the Super Bowl: You need me, I don’t need you. Every night we in the end zone. Tell the NFL we in stadiums too.”