In a new GQ interview, Jay-Z said he was heartbroken and angry after a woman alleged in a since-dismissed 2024 civil lawsuit that he and fellow rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs had raped her when she was 13.

“It was hard. Really hard. … Like I was really heartbroken by everything that occurred,” the music mogul told GQ in a story published Tuesday.

Referring to the lawsuit, he said, “that shit took a lot out of me. I was angry. I haven’t been that angry in a long time, uncontrollable anger.”

“You don’t put that on someone—that’s a thing that you better be super sure,” he said. “It used to be like that. You had to be super sure before you put those kind of things on a person. Especially a person like me.”

In late 2024, a woman identified only as Jane Doe alleged that Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, and Combs had raped her in New York City after the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards while an unnamed female celebrity watched.

Jay-Z denied the woman’s allegations, and she dropped her lawsuit with prejudice, meaning she cannot file it again, in February 2025.

“Even when we were doing the worst things, we had those kind of rules,” Jay-Z told GQ. “There was a line: no women, no kids. You hear those sayings, but those are the things that I took from the street. We lived and died by that. So it’s strict for me, like it meant a lot to me.”

“I took that really hard ... because, first of all, it’s not true,” he said of the allegation. “And the truth, at the end of the day, still reigns supreme.”

The Roc Nation mogul filed a lawsuit in March 2025 against Doe and her attorney Tony Buzbee, accusing them of conspiring to make false and defamatory statements.

Buzbee has represented more than a hundred people accusing Combs of sexual and other misconduct, which Combs denied, but Doe’s was the only suit to mention Jay-Z. Combs was sentenced last year to just over four years in prison following a federal criminal trial.

Telling GQ that he would rather “die” than settle a lawsuit that made such grave allegations, Jay-Z explained, “[Settling] ain’t in my DNA.”

“First of all, I had to tell my wife [Beyoncé],” he said. “Let’s back up. I know the weight that this is going to bring on our family. I can’t do it. I would die.”

Asked how he has dealt emotionally with the fallout of the allegations, Jay-Z responded, “I’m still dealing with that. Because that’s a horrible thing to put on someone. It was like released the night of my daughter’s [movie] premiere.”

He credited the people closest to him for their support.

“I wasn’t naive. I called—again, after my family—my partners. They were like, ‘What do you need to help? Don’t even worry.’ In a phone call. Not even a: ‘I got to go to the board with this.’ It was like a testament because people know me. Like: ‘I know who you are and that’s impossible. Not only are we standing by you, but what do you need?’”

“I’ve built this circle that’s really safe for me of people that really love me, are not using me, and really care for my best interests. So I was able to have that in the most crucial time for me,” he told GQ.

Noting that “there’s blessings and curses,” in what he’d experienced, Jay-Z said the accusations helped him “see how people felt about me, especially people that were close to me.”

“People run” when “those types of things happen,” the record executive said, adding, “they don’t care what happened.”

Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.

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