JAY-Z has reminisced about how Chris Martin from Coldplay played a pivotal role in him performing at the Glastonbury Festival in 2008.
During a recent wide-ranging interview with Gayle King on CBS Mornings, the Grammy Award-winning rapper talked about Martin’s influence on him performing at Glastonbury, which was known specifically as a rock festival at that time. The announcement that JAY would be headlining drew criticism from some rockers, most famously Noel Gallagher of Oasis.
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“At one point, I was like why am I going there,” JAY-Z recalled as he took Gayle King on a tour through his Book of HOV exhibit.
“If they don’t want me there, I don’t want to go. And Chris from Coldplay was instrumental on [convincing me to play]. He was like, ‘Jay, they love you. It’s just the old guard, they don’t know. It’s always been a rock festival.’ They didn’t have anything against me personally, it was just like, this is a rock festival, this is what it is. The world was changing.”
JAY then recalled learning how to play Oasis’s hit “Wonderwall” on guitar right before the Glastonbury show — and he went on to famously open his set with a snippet of the song, as a dig at Gallagher. You can see the whole story at around the one-minute mark, below.
In this same interview, the Roc Nation mogul finally settled the long-running “$500,000 or dinner with JAY-Z?” debate.
“You gotta take the money,” he replied with little hesitation. “What I’ma say? You got all that [wisdom] in the music for $10.99! That’s a bad deal. I wouldn’t tell you to cut a bad deal. Take the $500,000, go buy some albums and listen to the albums — it’s all there!
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“If you piece it together and really listen to the music for the words, for what it is, it’s all there. Everything that I said was gonna happen, happened. Everything that I said I wanted to do, I’ve done. There’s the blueprint. The blueprint, literally, to me and my life and my journey is there already.”
JAY-Z was actually poked about the “$500,000 or dinner?” debate by a fan at the Los Angeles Chargers vs. Dallas Cowboys game at SoFi Stadium recently.
“I’m taking that $500,000. I ain’t taking that dinner, I’m taking that $500,000,” the fan, who calls himself K Rich, told the Brooklyn billionaire after bumping into him inside the arena. “Aye, it’s love, though. You feel me?”
Hov responded by quietly patting his chest out of respect and giving the fan a fist bump. “Be good, man,” he said.
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K Rich faced backlash for his brazen comments, though, with some people criticizing him for doing too much during the encounter.
