In a recent IG Live chat with Jaguar Wright, M.I.A. spilled the tea about Jay-Z and Roc Nation allegedly pushing her to ink a deal with the NFL – one she claims felt like a form of bondage.
M.I.A. dropped some heavy accusations about fighting big players in the industry. “I was fighting giants. At that time, Jay-Z, Roc Nation was supposed to negotiate that. They wanted me to sign this thing, which was slavery,” she revealed. “It was modern day slavery where the NFL takes 100% of my earnings.”
The drama kicked off when the NFL slapped her with a massive $16.6 million lawsuit. Why? She flipped the bird during Madonna’s Super Bowl XLVI halftime show. ESPN reported that just one month after her performance, the league went after the “Paper Planes” artist for $1.5 million through the American Arbitration Association.
Here’s the deal – every Super Bowl performer has to sign on the dotted line, promising to play by the NFL’s rules or face hefty penalties.
When things didn’t get sorted out, the NFL came back swinging two years later, tacking on another $15.1 million to their demands.
Eventually, Howard King told ESPN’s Darren Rovell in 2014 that his client and the league reached a hush-hush settlement.
Looking back in a Huck Magazine chat from 2018, M.I.A. revisited this NFL drama. “If you’re talking about racism and sexism, [the lawsuit] showed the cracks in everyone I knew,” she shared. “I was at Roc Nation at the time and Jay-Z was managing me. The lawsuit was so ridiculous, it proposed that they would keep one hundred percent of my earnings for the rest of my life if I ever earned more than $2 million dollars. Jay-Z was, like, ‘You should sign that shit’ and I was, like, ‘No.'”
But wait, there’s more – last year on Instagram Live, M.I.A. claimed that in their very first meeting, Jay-Z told her she needed plastic surgery.
