It’s been a rough year for prominent men in hip-hop. As a tidal wave of accountability continues to sweep the industry, the fallout from Sean “Diddy” Combs’s arrest continues to dredge up even more alleged horror stories. This time, it’s Jay-Z who is in the hot seat after an amended lawsuit filed in federal court this week alleged that he and Diddy took turns raping an unnamed 13-year-old girl during a VMAs afterparty that Diddy hosted in 2000. Diddy and Jay-Z deny the accusations.
As unsurprising as some have found the accusations – given the pair’s decades-long friendship and Jay-Z’s own eyebrow-raising alleged history with much younger women – Jay-Z’s response to this lawsuit and the blowback from his supporters is a stunning display of the culture of silence and complicity in hip-hop which continues to harm women and girls.
Jay-Z himself isn’t a newcomer to rumours about inappropriate relationships with minors. For years, speculation about the timelines and natures of his relationships with Foxy Brown, Aaliyah and eventually Beyoncé (all of whom are significantly younger than Jay-Z and were teenagers when they met him) have put him in the category of, at the very least, “Questionable Man”.
That’s why it was even more appalling to watch the typically measured, always calculated rap mogul release a statement that was condescending, un-self-aware and smacked of the smug overconfidence of someone who has operated with god-like status for so long that they don’t know what the rules even are, let alone that they have to follow them.
For starters, Jay-Z “implored” the plaintiff to file a criminal suit, “not a civil one!!” – a nonsense request when we know just how hard it is to secure a criminal conviction in a case like this, and just how useful the civil courts have been in awarding judgments in favor of victims of old crimes.
He’s also filed a motion to deny the plaintiff’s request for anonymity, asking that either her identity be disclosed or the case be dismissed. This demand that she out herself isn’t some attempt to level the playing field in the court of public opinion like he’s suggesting – it’s a way to force her into opening herself up to scrutiny, a move that is especially diabolical considering how the world treats women who stand up to abusers. And Jay-Z of all people should know: he was instrumental in helping Megan Thee Stallion navigate the hell she went up against after being shot by Tory Lanez.
But the rapper’s hostile approach to the accusations doesn’t end with his accuser. He is also suing her attorney, Tony Buzbee, whom he accuses of extortion. Buzbee has responded, accusing Jay-Z of “orchestrating a conspiracy of harassment” against him and his legal colleagues in an attempt to intimidate and silence his client.
When it comes to public response, much of it has been predictably asinine and filled with rap legend apologia. Some Black men on social media dusted off the Bill Cosby defence playbook, gleeful to be able to call the allegations “proof” of a conspiracy to bring down one of their own.
“My biggest problem in all of this is the clown show that sexual assaults have become,” said radio presenter Ebro Darden, hedging his defence of Jay-Z as a protection of the gravity of sexual assault. “I don’t know why so many people want to see Jay-Z get torn down. It’s disgusting. People love a tear-down of somebody successful … I would say in all this [that] it still takes me back to how upsetting it is that sexual assault is a game.”
All this is to be expected: Jay-Z is arguably the most powerful man in hip-hop and our misogynistic, celebrity-obsessed culture demands that he have staunch defenders in a moment like this. What I think is more interesting are the ways that Jay-Z has situated himself within the white American establishment – his relationship with the National Football League (NFL), in particular – and what role that will play as this story continues to unfold. For his part, Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, said in a perfunctory statement on Wednesday that the league was aware of the allegations and Jay-Z’s “really strong response” to them, and that their “relationship is not changing”.
There’s another haunting but important detail from the lawsuit that much of the news around the allegations has ignored: that “another celebrity stood by and watched as [Diddy] and [Jay-Z] took turns assaulting the minor”. It’s eerie, thinking about just how much that violence is mirrored by the further trauma that victims endure while seeking justice for themselves publicly, violated in front of a captive audience who cares little about their humanity.
And while it’ll probably be some time before this specific case is worked out in the courts, it is important for victims to know that there are remedies to the codes of silence, misogyny and harm that thrive in hip-hop and keep victims trapped in cycles of abuse.
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