Colin Kaepernick's protests against racial injustice and systemic oppression of Black communities in the United States eventually got him out of the NFL, but his cause never ends. He recently released his memoir The Perilous Fight and has been opening up to various outlets about the issues he protested against and the backlash and blackballing he received as a result. During an appearance on Trevor Noah's What Now? podcast, the former NFL player claimed Jay-Z and Roc Nation tried to plant hit pieces on Kaepernick after he called the Roc mogul a sellout for teaming up with the league in the wake of the activist and athlete's protests. The Hov part of the conversation begins at around the 2:10:00 mark of the YouTube video below.
For those unaware, the Brooklyn superstar and the Roc partnered with the league in 2019 to oversee live entertainment endeavors like the Super Bowl and collaborate on their social justice initiatives. While some folks praised the move, others like Kaepernick felt like Hov was used to sanitize the NFL's image and should've refused to endorse the league after their treatment of the quarterback. The backlash against Jay over this continues, as proven by Jay-Z's recent freestyle dismissing the Colin Kaepernick controversy.
Trevor Noah asked Kaepernick where their relationship stands today. He said there was previous admiration due to Jay's support of Colin, but when he tried to thank him for wearing his jersey on SNL, he wouldn't take a call or a meeting. Colin also said Roc Nation was trying to recruit him as a client, and that Jay-Z wanted Kaepernick to join him onstage for a performance of "The Story Of O.J." Kaepernick refused, asking for a meeting instead.
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Colin Kaepernick On Jay-Z
"Where the real issue came about was... The NFL built up an organization called the Players Coalition to be able to end the protests... Explicitly giving them a payout," he remarked. "They came to an agreement. The next week, they stopped protesting... Part of what came in advance of that deal... 'We need a Black face to help us lead this.' [...] They tried that with the Players Coalition. It wasn't successful. And Jay-Z was the 2.0 version of that, in my opinion."
Also, Colin Kaepernick claimed the NFL offered him the position of that "Black face" for social justice initiatives despite their blackballing. He called Jay-Z "disingenuous" for an interview in which he said he hadn't talked to him about the NFL deal. "The next day... I get a text, 'Hey, can you get on a call?' from Jay-Z," Kaepernick claimed. "It's been a few years at this point that I've been trying to have a conversation... I was like, 'I completely disagree with what you're doing. You're selling the culture out to people who do not care about the culture.' He was like, 'Well, the ink is dry.'"
Colin said his "one ask" was for Jay to "keep his name out of it." But then, he brought up Hov's "We're past kneeling" comments following their conversation. Then, Kaepernick claimed he and his team received direct calls about Roc Nation putting out hit pieces on Kaepernick and trying to plant negative stories about him.
"We had journalists call us and be like, 'We got these calls from Roc Nation. Is this true?'" Colin Kaepernick claimed. He also claimed journalists pivoted to speculative stories about Jay potentially owning an NFL team after not running the alleged hit pieces. "We saw a definitive effort to try to disparage me in that process."
