It had been rumored that Jay-Z would take advantage of his spot as the musical guest on the season 43 premiere of “SNL” to make a political statement related to the NFL player protests that reached a fever pitch this past week.
And a statement he did make, stepping on stage to perform “Bam” with Damian Marley, while wearing a a football jersey sporting Colin Kaepernick’s number 7 and the name “Colin K” on the back.
It was not, however, an officially sanctioned NFL jersey, but rather a blank generic jersey with no team name or logo. Obviously, “Colin K” is also not normal styling for an NFL jersey. The fact that Jay-Z wore a generic jersey may be an extra knock against the NFL and its teams, which continue to not employ Kaepernick, who led the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl during the 2012-13 season.
Earlier in September, Jay-Z dedicated a song to Kaepernick during a show in New York City, which you can see below.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BZG325VlYH1/
It was not a remarkably political episode of “SNL” aside from this bit, another appearance by Alec Baldwin as Trump in the cold open sketch and a completely savage stretch of Weekend Update in which Michael Che and Colin Jost went all out on Trump’s recent inability to do anything that makes sense from a human standpoint.
Jay-Z did not wear the jersey when he returned for his second performance.