Noname took a bold risk by calling out some of Hip Hop and R&B’s most beloved figures by name for working with the NFL — among them was JAY-Z, and she has now clarified that she feels no resentment toward him.
In an interview clip shared by Apple Music’s Ebro Darden on Tuesday (October 31), the Chicago MC set the record straight regarding her confrontational bars from Sundial‘s “Namesake” that had her spitting: “I ain’t fuckin’ with the NFL or JAY-Z/ Propaganda for the military complex.”
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On that same track, she also faulted Rihanna, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar for their affiliation with the football league despite numerous allegations of its stakeholders blackballing Colin Kaepernick for protesting police brutality. Despite her directness on the track, she maintains that people have misunderstood what she was trying to get at.
“I don’t hate this man,” the 32-year-old said about Hov, who now produces the Super Bowl Halftime Show. “I don’t know JAY-Z. He’s a total stranger. We just have ideological differences. That’s all, which the song was just talking about a lot of things, but definitely complacency from all of us.
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“I think the names got the most focus like, ‘Go Rihanna, go. Go, Beyonce, go.’ But really that was supposed to be me mimicking the crowd, like this is how y’all look, making all these critiques about folks on the internet but then we be running to the shows to go and support.”
She added: “I have made similar moves in my own career where I’ve contradicted myself, where I’ve done things or supported institutions that I don’t really believe in, and that’s why I called the song ‘Namesake,’ because even though I’m saying all this stuff, I am the same. We are all one in the same.”
As for her other tiffs, Noname recently revealed that she’s made peace with J. Cole several years after both MCs traded jabs on record. Speaking to Complex last month, she opened up about her “spirited debate” with the Dreamville boss.
“I wouldn’t say [Cole] was necessarily wrong,” she admitted. “I think we both could have went about it in a better way… [W]e both could have done better. I’m like, ‘Bro, I’m only on Twitter, I’m not even talking about you. It’s tweets, I thought you wasn’t on Twitter.’”
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The Ghetto Sage member, who said Cole helped her gain “hella followers” due to the spat, then explained how she connected with him earlier this year.
“I had a block party this past summer and I was hitting him to see if he could pull up on some special guest shit, and he was really about it,” she said. “He wasn’t able to because he’s a father with children, but he was down to donate.
“We have prison chapters for our book club, so he was like, ‘I’m definitely down to support.’ He’s really sweet. We do not have beef, we love Cole over here.”
The dispute with the Fayetteville native began when he released “Snow On Tha Bluff” in 2020, on which he refers to “a young lady out there she way smarter than me.”
On it, he raps: “Now I ain’t no dummy to think I’m above criticism/ So when I see something that’s valid, I listen/ But shit, it’s something about the queen tone that’s bothering me.”
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Many assumed that Cole was talking about Noname, who subsequently responded on “Song 33” with: “I guess the ego hurt now/ It’s time to go to work, wow, look at him go/ He really ’bout to write about me when the world is in smokes.”
Just days later, she admitted on social media that she was “not proud” of herself for releasing the song.
