Jay-Z says his friend and fellow rapper Kanye West doesn’t always pick the right time to make a point. Jay was a guest on Howard Stern’s Sirius satellite radio show Monday, where he said Taylor Swift’s speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards wasn’t the right place to take a stand. Jay remarks, quote, “It’s bittersweet in a lot of ways. If we look back, everyone would agree that he was right. It was bad timing.” Jay-Z says Kanye’s racially-charged accusation against then-President George W. Bush during a 2005 Hurricane Katrina telethon was also poorly timed. The “DOA” rapper does, however, believe that West was expressing an “honest emotion” that a lot of people could agree with. He adds, quote, “We all felt like that. We didn’t feel like Katrina was a natural disaster. We felt like it was an attack on black people.”
Jay-Z was a guest on Howard Stern’s show to promote his new memoir “Decoded.” The book, which arrives in stores today, will explore Jay-Z’s life and the meaning behind the lyrics to some of his biggest hits.
