Jay-Z opened up about the “uncontrollable anger” he felt after being sued for sexual assault, and explained his refusal to settle the case in a new interview with GQ.
The suit was brought in 2024 by a Jane Doe, who claimed Jay and Sean “Diddy” Combs sexually assaulted her during a VMAs afterparty in 2000, when she was 13. Jay vociferously denied the allegations (as did Combs), and wound up suing Jane and her lawyer, Tony Buzbee, for malicious prosecution and defamation. Jane eventually dropped her suit last year, while Jay’s suit was dismissed a few months later.
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 died 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 die.”
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.”
He then said he didn’t know if that kind of music “would have done more harm than good,” and admitted with a laugh that the few “scratch ideas” he jotted down in this headspace were “all bad.”
Rather, Jay — who hasn’t released an album of his own since 2017’s 4:44 — said he’s found plenty of creative fulfillment in just helping out his wife Beyoncé with her recent projects. “I know what she’s trying to accomplish and anything that I can contribute — I mean, that’s my family, first of all — I thought it was super important,” he said. “And a fun challenge.”
While Jay said he was ready to play “all offense” in 2026 after a couple of years on defense, it’s unclear whether that’ll include new music. (He is scheduled to play a handful of shows this year, including two nights at Yankee Stadium in New York City.)
“Forget the landscape of music. I don’t know what I need to create currently that’s going to fulfill me and make me happy because that’s most important,” he said. “I know I just got to be honest about what I feel and where I am. Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe I’m stopping myself from just creating. Whatever it is, it just needs to be a true representation of how I feel. Trying to create something that people like is where I think a lot of artists get jammed up. And people can feel that because it’s not authentic. I just got to make something timeless that I really love and that’s really honest and true to who I am.”
