Jay-Z served as the headliner for Roots Picnic on Saturday in Philadelphia, and he surprised fans with a provocative freestyle right at the get-go. During his first headlining show in more than five years, he performed 32-songs over the course of 90 minutes and along with delivering his big hits, he also dropped disses on haters that include Drake, Kanye West, and Nicki Minaj.
Just minutes into his performance, he took his first apparent shot: Following 2002’s “Hovi Baby,” he dropped a four-minute freestyle. Performing a cappella, he seemingly went off on Drake, addressing his Iceman song “Janice STFU,” where Drake raps, “The jig is up.” On Saturday, Jay-Z clapped back: “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.” He had more for Drake: “Them crackers got your publishing gangsta, go talk tough to them, don’t talk success to me,” he spit. “You n—-s is workers, in perpetuity is how your contract is worded/Don’t make me go further, man.”
On West, now known as Ye, Jay-Z’s bars appeared to home in on Ye previously making derogatory comments about Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s children. “You ever heard of wonder-kin? My children are some of them,” Jay-Z rapped, “Have you n—-s have no shame? You trying to get under skin? I’ll really get under skin.” While Jay-Z’s lyrics took Ye to task, he still delivered songs from their collaborative album, Watch the Throne, including “No Church in the Wild,” “Gotta Have It,” and “N—-s in Paris,” per Setlist.fm.
When it came to what seemed like a shot at Minaj, Jay-Z rapped, “That lady back on that stuff/She sounds like she’s in love with ’em/Her Ken can’t even pick they kid, enough of them.”
The freestyle comes after Jay-Z recently weighed in on the Kendrick Lamar-Drake beef in an interview with GQ, arguing that “this is taking us a couple steps back.” He added: “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.” Despite saying that, he also admitted that his stance on rap battles may be hypocritical, given his own history with rhyme wars. And his freestyle last night serves as a case in point.
His Roots Picnic set, where he was backed by the Roots, featured a bevy of guests, including Meek Mill, Jazmine Sullivan, Bilal, and a reunited State Property.
Jay-Z’s Roots Picnic appearance served as a precursor to his Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint anniversary shows set for New York’s Yankee Stadium on July 10 and 11.
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