“I’m backing Kanye 100%,” Jay-Z tells Billboard. “This is America. You should
be able to say what you want to say. We have freedom of speech.” Jay-Z admits
he shares some of West’s views about the slow response to the disaster. “It’s
really numbing,” he says. “You can’t believe it’s happening in America. You
wonder, what’s going on? Why were people so slow to react? I don’t understand
it.”

Although Jay-Z says he hasn’t “spoken to anyone about doing a concert event”
to benefit Katrina victims, he says he wants to speak with Sean “Diddy” Combs
about starting a fund exclusively to aid African-Americans in times of crisis.
“Just in case anything like this happens in the future, we can do what the elder
Bush and [former President Bill] Clinton are doing for our people specifically.”