Jay-Z addresses his “complicated relationship” with Kanye West

Jay-Z opens up in a new interview with The New York Times about his friendship with Kanye West and working on a joint album with Beyoncé.

In November last year, Kanye called out his Watch The Throne partner in a rant during his Sacramento gig. He said on stage, “I’ve been sent here to give y’all my truth even at the risk of my own life, my own success, my own career. Jay-Z – call me, bruh. You still ain’t called me. Jay-Z, I know you got killers. Please don’t send them at my head. Please call me. Talk to me like a man.”

In response, on the track Kill Jay-Z from 4:44, the Roc Nation artist rapped, “But you ain’t the same, this ain’t KumbaYe/ But you got hurt because you think KumbaYe/ You gave him 20 million without thinkin’/ He gave you 20 minutes on stage, fuck was he thinkin’?/ ‘Fuck wrong with everybody?’ is what you sayin’/ But if everybody’s crazy, you’re the one that’s insane.”

Now, the rapper says he’s always been a “big brother” to Kanye and admits that there’s tension between them. On their differences, Jay-Z details how Kanye “started out in a more compassionate position”.

“It’s always been like a little underlying competition with your big brother. And we both love and respect each other’s art, too. So it’s like, we both – everyone wants to be the greatest in the world. You know what I’m saying? And then there’s like a lot of other factors that play in it. But it’s gonna, we gonna always be good,” he said.

“In the long relationship, you know, hopefully when we’re 89 we look at this six months or whatever time and we laugh at that. You know what I’m saying? There’s gonna be complications in the relationship that we have to get through. And the only way to get through that is we sit down and have a dialogue and say, ‘These are the things that I’m uncomfortable with. These are the things that are unacceptable to me. This is what I feel.’ I’m sure he feels that I’ve done things to him as well.”

He ends his talk on Kanye with: “But [West is] a very compassionate person. And a lot of times he get in trouble trying to help others. So I can identify with it. It’s just that there’s certain things that happened that’s not really acceptable to me.”

Furthermore, the artist says that he’d vote for Dave Chappelle for president, and revealed that he worked on a joint album with Beyoncé. The two used “art almost like a therapy session” together. However, “the music she was making at that time was further along”. Last year, Beyoncé released her ambitious album Lemonade, which came accompanied with a visual for each track.

Read the full interview here.