What Jay-Z Got Right About Rage After a False Accusation
The case gets dropped. The damage doesn't.
I’ve gotten several comments on the measured tone and balanced emotions of my podcast series. I appreciate the acknowledgement because it’s not an easy balance. As people have discovered the series and hear the unbelievable details, they feel some anger over what I was put through. Good.
I explain to them: I do feel rage over being dragged through the metaphorical streets, hung from the metaphorical gallows. So what? Rage offers nothing by itself. But it can be harnessed, used to fuel creative expression, to externalize the trauma, to make some useful form out of such fury. What else can I do after such an attack?
Mega-producer Jay-Z has the same shape of wound that I do.
In December 2024, a woman filed suit accusing Jay-Z and Sean Combs of raping her at a VMA after-party in 2000. She claimed she was thirteen years old at the time. The accusation was published everywhere, and within hours his name was placed next to the word “rape.” Of course he denied it. He filed motions, spent a fortune, and called out the accusation and her lawyer as wrong about everything. Fortunately for him, the accuser eventually withdrew the complaint with prejudice. She cannot refile it. I didn’t get such a reprieve.
He called that a victory.
It is a victory the way surviving a car accident is a victory. Technically correct. Missing something.
In a GQ interview, he said he was heartbroken, that it took a lot out of him, and that his anger felt uncontrollable. He added that you have to be absolutely sure before you put something like that on a person.
We have developed a very specific expectation for men who are falsely accused and ultimately exonerated. We expect relief. We expect measured statements. We expect dignified sadness. We expect gratitude that the truth prevailed. But that’s a big ask. It means holding the rage yourself, keeping a lid on it, taking the win (well, at least you’re not in prison) and moving along.
Rage makes people uncomfortable. It sounds like a complaint, because it is. It sounds like Jay-Z, or Carr, is making himself the story again, when the story should be something else. Move on. Count your blessings. The system worked.
But rage is not a failure of gratitude for not being imprisoned. It is a reasonable response to an unreasonable thing, to being robbed and reputationally ruined.
When someone places your name next to the word rape and publishes it to the world, the damage does not wait for the verdict. It does not hold itself in reserve while the legal process runs its course. It lands immediately and completely. The withdrawal of the complaint does not retrieve it.
Jay-Z said “uncontrollable.” That’s exactly right. That’s what it feels like when something unjust is done to you, an ugliness that cannot be undone, a stain that will not come out, and the people around you say: move on.
What they mean is: move on for us. So we don’t have to feel it anymore, so we don’t have to hear about it anymore.
No. Rage is the necessary enzyme to create, move, and inspire change. I’m using it