Since he emerged onto the music scene in the early Nineties, Jay-Z has achieved a rare kind of cultural status within the entertainment industry. Once the bad boy from the hood, he has cultivated the persona of the measured, phlegmatic genius, the Brooklyn drug dealer turned billionaire tycoon so esteemed that he became the subject of a viral online debate asking whether $500,000 cash or one dinner with him would be more valuable. Widely accepted as hip-hop’s greatest of all time, Jay has, in recent years, been notoriously laconic, speaking through his success as an investor, musician and businessman.
But over the weekend, that image was swiftly shattered. On Sunday, an amended lawsuit filed in a US federal court alleged that Jay-Z and fellow music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl at a New York party after the MTV Music Awards in 2000. Originally filed in October, at the time it did not name Jay-Z as a defendant, but the amended suit claims that the rapper was identified as Celebrity A on the original complaint.
