Jay-Z‘s BBC-1 interview covered a wide range of topics, including the furor surrounding the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. The hip-hop superstar explained that America has a responsibility to show that it can live up to its ideals, or else its image will forever be steeped in hypocrisy to the rest of the world.
“Everyone outside of America was like, ‘Wow,’ ” he explained. “There was a time when people were getting this sort of aversion to America like, ‘You preach these ideals but you don’t really practice them.’ You know? That was a major turn for us to be like, ‘Maybe it is the things that they profess, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Everyone’s getting a shot, any color or creed.’ We dealt with racism in America, in that way, that there’s a black president.”
“It still exists, as we see with Trayvon and Zimmerman trial that’s going on,” Jay continued. “Of course, it exists but we’ve dealt with that in some way. We have to deal with sexism, of course. That’s the next thing.”
Despite his association with President Barack Obama, Jay-Z admitted that he has a distaste for politics.
“My thing is about hope, hope that a person like Obama inspires in an entire nation and even outside of the nation,” he said. “What I support, other than Obama as a great guy, a more than capable president — is the hope that he represents to a generation of kids who grew up like me, that they can achieve this American dream. I’m pretty much into that idea. The politics part really bothers me because, for the most part, these people are putting up arguments against each other and there’s ego and there’s all these things and it’s about everything but people.”
“The government’s too big. Let’s shrink that,” he added with a smirk. “Let’s get rid of all of these f–kin’ assh—s and shrink it to the people who really care and get things done.”
