Jay-Z shot his brother and was a teen crack dealer. Now he's accused of rape with Diddy. Whatever the truth, there's a twisted past everyone's too afraid to admit, writes MAUREEN CALLAHAN
In a lengthy statement released on Sunday night, Jay-Z – real name Shawn Carter – issued a rambling, ungrammatical defense against a lawsuit alleging that he, with Sean 'Diddy' Combs, raped a 13-year-old girl at a VMA afterparty in 2000.
To my mind, anyone wrongly accused of such a vile and depraved crime would surely be wise to put forth a simple, declarative, emphatic denial.
That's not what Jay-Z gave us.
While that in no way implies guilt — which is a matter for a court to decide — his statement is such a mess that I'd guess Jay-Z didn't run it by his team.
Calling these allegations 'a blackmail attempt', Jay-Z denigrated Tony Buzbee, the lawyer who filed the amended complaint, and then went to great lengths to paint himself as a victim.
'My only heartbreak is for my family,' wrote the rapper. 'My wife and I will have to sit our children down… and explain the cruelty and greed of people.'
Cruelty and greed are two things Jay-Z knows intimately, as we will see.
He continued: 'I mourn yet another loss of innocence. Children should not have to endure such [sic] at their young age.'
He then bemoaned how much famous people are misunderstood. Addressing Buzbee again, he wrote: 'You have made a terrible error in judgement thinking that all 'celebrities' are the same. I'm not from your world. I'm a young man who made it out of the project [sic] of Brooklyn… We have very strict codes and honor. We protect children… only your network of conspiracy theorists, fake physics' — whatever that means — 'will believe the idiotic claims you have levied against me.'
One may think, after struggling to read this, that Jay-Z was a true man of principles, or moral uprightness.
Not so. Not by a long shot.
Jay-Z is a high school dropout who, by his own admission, was a drug dealer at age 13. He sold crack to his own community for years.
He told none other than Oprah Winfrey, in 2009, that 'drug dealers were my role models' and that, when he was 12, he shot his 16-year-old brother.
In October 2001, Jay-Z pleaded guilty to stabbing rival record producer Lance 'Un' Rivera in the shoulder and stomach — a stabbing he initially denied — in 1999 at New York City's Kit Kat Club.
Here's what Jay-Z said in court, after months of proclaiming his innocence: 'I stabbed Lance Rivera. I have accepted responsibility for my actions.'
He got three years' probation.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14182195/jay-z-shot-brother-stabbed-crack-dealer-rape-diddy-MAUREEN-CALLAHAN.html