Jay-Z opened his headlining set at the 2026 Roots Picnic Saturday with a freestyle that put Drake, Nicki Minaj, Ye, Dame Dash, and Tory Lanez all on notice.
Before running through his catalog with The Roots at Belmont Plateau in Philadelphia, he came out swinging with an unscripted verse that addressed each target by name, or made it clear enough that no one needed a name. He opened with a nod to his grandmother Hattie and closed the same way. Everything in between was for everybody who had something to say.
Drake was first. Jay rapped, “My next update, the jig is up / Nigga, I’m up ten / Wrong chart, champ, you gotta look up again / Niggas look up to Hov, I never looked up to them.” The bars were a direct response to “Janice STFU,” a track off Drake’s Iceman, released earlier this month, where Drake rapped, “You boys got big on my name, that’s big enough / We know how you OGs rocking already my nigga, the jig is up.” Jay flipped the line back and kept going. “Don’t talk success to me, you niggas is workers / In perpetuities, how your contracts is worded.”
Dame Dash came next. Jay rapped, “Niggas’ teeth is tumblin’ out their mouth and somehow I’m the one who done it, there’s a murder mystery game.” The line pointed directly at a September 2024 Instagram Live where Dash’s teeth visibly fell out while he was in the middle of dissing 50 Cent.
The Nicki Minaj section landed on multiple levels at once. Jay rapped, “That lady back on the stuff, she sound like she in love with him / Her Ken can’t even p— take they kids, enough of them / A rapper can’t be my opp, I got MAGA republicans / Them shots came from the very top of the government, good luck with them.” The stutter on “p—” was deliberate, mimicking a live performance where Nicki stumbled through “Red Ruby Da Sleeze,” losing her place on the line “But I don’t fuck with horses since Christopher Reeves.” Beyond the mockery, Jay went after her politics and her husband Kenneth Petty, a registered sex offender, in the same bars. Nicki has been publicly accusing Jay of owing her hundreds of millions of dollars for her stake in Tidal since last year.
watch till the end. this man is CRAZY 😭😭😭 https://t.co/u4JP7ULj5e pic.twitter.com/BqKa13z7QE
— angola hills (@somebadbadnews) May 31, 2026
Jay then addressed Ye for the first time publicly since March 2025, when Ye posted a series of now-deleted messages on X using an ableist slur to describe Jay and Beyoncé’s twins, Rumi and Sir. “WAIT HAS ANYONE EVER SEEN JAY Z AND BEYONCES YOUNGER KIDS,” Ye wrote in one of the posts. “THEYRE RETA*DED. NO LIKE LITERALLY. AND THIS IS WHY ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION IS A BLESSING.” Ye later apologized and deleted the posts. Jay never responded until Saturday. He rapped, “You ever heard of a wunderkind? / My children is some of them, have you niggas no shame? / Y’all tryin’ to get under skin / I really get under skin, ask Un how I’m playin’.”
Tory Lanez and his father closed it out. Jay rapped, “The Roc’s not crumblin’, the leprechauns have magically run out of pranks / Your son on a federal jail line mumblin’ somethin’ about havin’ too much in his drink / You know how dumb that is?” The “leprechaun” reference is a widely understood nod to Lanez’s height. The “too much in his drink” line referenced a phone call Lanez made to Kelsey Harris from jail the morning of the 2020 shooting of Megan Thee Stallion.
On it, Lanez told Harris, “I know she probably never ever gonna ever talk to me ever again, but bruh I just want you to know bruh, n***a I was just so fucking drunk … I never do some shit like that bruh … you know regardless that’s not gonna make anything right, and that’s not gonna make my actions right bro, but I’m just deeply sorry bruh.”
Lanez was convicted on all three charges in December 2022 and sentenced to 10 years. His father, Sonstar Peterson, responded outside the courthouse that day by addressing Jay directly. “Jay-Z, let me speak to you … because my son refused to sign a Roc Nation deal with you,” Peterson said. “Roc Nation, you will crumble. I am an apostle of God, and you will know who I am.”
He opened the freestyle with a tribute to his grandmother. “Hattie’s turnin’ a hundred / If she would’ve transitioned ‘fore I cleared my name, I would’ve hunted them / Every one of them playin’ these silly games.” He closed it the same way. “Hattie loves her shawnies, S-H-A-W-N / I find it adorable she put the S at the end / You don’t know the show ain’t even begin.”
