Jay-Z Calls Kanye West’s Coldplay Betrayal Complaint “Entitlement”

Jay-Z finally answered Kanye West’s old complaint that working with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin felt like a betrayal.

The issue came up in episode seven of JAŸ-Z in 8, the HBO documentary series built around Jay’s two-day conversation with producer Rick Rubin.

West put the grievance on record in “Big Brother,” a song from his 2007 album Graduation. He said he told Jay about his work with Coldplay, then learned Jay had also recorded with the band.

West admitted on the song that he complained to executive Jay Brown instead of speaking directly to the boss himself. Jay-Z now says the complaint never made sense to him.

“It’s almost as if I betrayed him [Kanye] by having a song with him. Chris is my friend. I introduced them,” Jay said in the series.

That response adds an important piece to the timeline. Martin appeared on “Beach Chair” from Jay’s 2006 album Kingdom Come. West’s Martin-assisted “Homecoming” followed in 2007. Jay then appeared on Coldplay’s “Lost+” in 2008.

In other words, Jay’s musical relationship with Martin was already public before “Homecoming” landed on Graduation.

But “Big Brother” framed the later Coldplay collaboration as another tense moment between West and the mentor he admired, competed with and sometimes resented.

Jay-Z told Rubin he could understand why West felt bothered without agreeing that the feeling was fair. He called part of it entitlement and argued that artists do not own one another’s creative relationships.

The exchange fits the larger purpose of JAŸ-Z in 8.

The series uses Jay’s catalog to explore his lyrics, career and creative process. Earlier installments covered his Brooklyn childhood, his relationships with The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, his absent father and the making of The Blueprint.

Episode six also revisited Jay’s first meeting with West and placed “Kill Jay Z” and “Ignorant Shit” under Rubin’s microscope.

That setup makes the new answer part of a continuing account, not an isolated sound bite. Episode seven moves that history forward by letting Jay respond to a complaint that has lived inside West’s music for nearly two decades.