This interview has only reinforced my love for the guy: he speaks his mind and is not afraid to do so even though it could potentially damage his career? After all who dares to say anything bad about Jay-Z? What about nobody?
QOTSA frontman Josh Homme doesn’t care about this, his band just performed at Jay-Z’s Made In America festival, and he had a few bad things to say about his experience in a recent interview on CBC Radio 2:
‘The guy’s a kook, you know. He has security frisking bands on the way in. I just told him, ‘If you open up my bag, we’re not playing. So I guess it’s up to you to have to decide whether we’re playing or not.’… You shouldn’t frisk my guys, you should fuck off.’
I totally recognize his style, don’t mess with Josh, and what’s the deal with this excessive security for the members of a band invited to perform? But there was even harsher comments in the same interview, when Josh Homme explained that Jay-Z offered them a bottle of his champagne and asked to pose for a picture with them:
‘I was like, ‘That’s not a gift– that’s a marketing tool.’ I destroyed it, ’cause I thought it was rude overall.’
Then you can hear a noise later during the interview and Homme saying: ‘This is me breaking Jay Z’s gifts. People never say anything bad about Jay Z, do they?’
Indeed! Because almost everybody is pretty much a brown nose in this business, and everyone is way too busy to get the favor of rich and influent people like Jay-Z, who is way more busy making money than art. Some may argue that QOTSA are now so big they don’t need the approval of someone like Jay Z anymore, still, they are nobody compared to the rap mogul and Josh Homme’s public comments were ballsy! Only Harry Belafonte dare to criticize Jay Z and this is a good sign.
You can listen to the whole interview below and the Jay Z comments are around 1:56:00 and 2:16:00.