Stephen A. Smith has launched an impassioned defense against his friend Jay-Z after the rapper was accused of raping a girl when she was just 13.
A woman who previously sued Sean “Diddy” Combs, alleging she was raped at an awards show afterparty in 2000, amended the lawsuit Sunday to allege Jay-Z was also at the party and participated in the sexual assault .
The 24-time Grammy award-winning rapper, producer and music mogul called the allegations “idiotic” and “heinous in nature.”
Now Smith, who claims to have known Jay-Z for 25 years, claims there is “no way” he can believe the musician was guilty of such an offense.
“I can’t believe for a second that he would ever be linked to an accusation like this,” he said. ‘Rape? First of all, I wouldn’t believe that. Second, a 13 year old? No.’
Smith continued, “Anyone who has been around Jay-Z and knows him has seen him defend the most helpless among us: the children.”
Stephen A. Smith has spoken out after Jay-Z was accused of raping a girl when she was just 13
The 24-time Grammy Award-winning rapper called the allegations ‘idiotic’ and ‘horrific’
Smith spoke about this in the last episode The Stephen A. Smith Show. “If you can’t provide eyewitness evidence to refute the allegations against anyone, it’s irresponsible to go beyond that on air,” he said.
‘It’s not irresponsible to point out who is a friend of mine, someone I met and who I don’t believe for a second would be capable of something like that. That’s not irresponsible, that’s love there’
Smith has not spoken to Jay-Z since the allegations emerged, but the ESPN host complained that in America the presumption of innocence until proven guilty “has now changed.”
“The Jay-Z I know is the Jay-Z I’ve seen among teenagers and he doesn’t even want us to play the kind of music we listen to in hip-hop. He made us turn it off,” Smith continued.
“That guy – who played a concert next to R. Kelly in 2004, who he grew to dislike, especially because of the accusations made against him, finding that sort of thing despicable and disgusting.
In 2022, R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison for using his status to sexually abuse children and women.