Jay-Z, who was leading nominations for the Grammys, was feted on Saturday by music industry heavyweights — and, in between, was taken to task by the president of the United States.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump criticized Jay-Z on his Twitter feed, likely in response to the rap mogul\u2019s denunciations of the US leader in an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody please inform Jay-Z that because of my policies, Black Unemployment has just been reported to be at the LOWEST RATE EVER RECORDED!\u201d Trump tweeted.<\/p>\n
Trump was accurately pointing to record-low unemployment for US minorities, although critics note that the US economic expansion began well before under his predecessor Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
Jay-Z, who along with his wife Beyonce became friends and political allies of Obama, in the interview broadcast Saturday on CNN said that Trump\u2019s belittling remarks toward people of color overshadowed any employment data.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoney doesn\u2019t equate to happiness. It doesn\u2019t. That\u2019s missing the whole point,\u201d said Jay-Z, no stranger to flashing his material wealth.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou treat people like human beings, then that\u2019s the main point,\u201d he told host Van Jones, a former aide to Obama.<\/p>\n
Jay-Z said that Trump\u2019s election laid bare the persistence of racism in the United States and voiced dismay at the president\u2019s reported quip that he did not want immigrants coming from \u201cshithole\u201d countries in Africa or predominantly black Haiti.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s real hurtful. Because it\u2019s looking down at a whole population of people and it\u2019s so misinformed because these places have beautiful people and beautiful everything,\u201d Jay-Z said.<\/p>\n
Jay-Z is in the running for eight Grammys on Sunday amid acclaim for his latest album \u201c4:44,\u201d a strikingly introspective work in which he addresses institutional racism, apologizes to Beyonce for infidelity and supports his mother as she comes out as a lesbian.<\/p>\n
Jay-Z on Saturday night received an award as an \u201cindustry icon\u201d at a pre-Grammy gala, where the rapper voiced contrition for boycotting the music industry\u2019s prize night two decades earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jay-Z, who was leading nominations for the Grammys, was feted on Saturday by music industry heavyweights — and, in between, was taken to task by the president of the United States. President Donald Trump criticized Jay-Z on his Twitter feed, likely in response to the rap mogul\u2019s denunciations of the US leader in an interview. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20185,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20186,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20184\/revisions\/20186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}