Jay-Z delivered some fiery shots on the microphone during his headlining performance at the annual Roots Picnic festival in Philadelphia.
Jay-Z took aim at former collaborator Kanye West and fellow rappers Nicki Minaj and Drake during his set on Saturday, May 30, according to Rolling Stone.
“That lady back on the stuff / She sound like she in love with him / Her Ken can’t even pick they kids / Enough of them,” he rapped, per the outlet, an apparent reference to Minaj’s husband, Kenneth Petty, who was convicted of attempted rape in 1995 and is now a registered sex offender.
As for West, Jay-Z said, “You ever heard of wonder-kin? / My children are some of them / Have you n*****s have no shame? / You trying to get under skin? / I’ll really get under skin.”
The rapper’s freestyle remarks appeared to be in response to West making offensive remarks in the past about Jay-Z’s children with wife Beyoncé.
Rolling Stone noted that despite their fractured relationship over the years, Jay-Z, 56, performed several tracks from Watch the Throne, his hit 2011 collaborative album with West.
Jay-Z also seemingly clapped back at Drake, who appeared to allude to him on his recent album Iceman. On the song “Janice STFU,” Drake rapped, “The jig is up.” (Jay-Z has long been known by the nickname Jigga.)
“The jig is up / We got up 10 / Wrong chart, champ / You gotta look up again / N*****s look up to Hov / I never looked up to them,” Jay-Z, real name Shawn Carter, fired off on Saturday. “Them crackers got your publishing gangsta / Go talk tough to them / Don’t talk success to me.”
Jay-Z recently weighed in on the infamous feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, who have exchanged barbs on tracks and on stage.
“Just everything around it was like, ‘Man, this is taking us a couple steps back,’” Jay-Z reasoned in a March interview with GQ. “We’ve just grown so much that — I guess I’m going to say it — I don’t know if battling needs to be part of the culture anymore.”
“It’s too far. It’s bringing people’s kids in it. I don’t like that. I sound like the old guy wagging his finger, but I think we can achieve the same thing, as far as sparring with music, with collaborations more so than breaking the whole thing apart,” he added. “It could stand it before because there was no social media. You had the battle and it was fun and then you moved on. Right now, I don’t know if it could stand it with the technology that we have.”
