Jay-Z has Kanye’s back on Katrina comments, Taylor Swift incident

Rapper Jay-Z has spoken out in defense of his much maligned friend Kanye West on the subject of both his outburst at a telethon to raise money for victims of Hurricane Katrina as well as his stunt interrupting Taylor’s Swift’s award acceptance to complain that Beyonce hadn’t won for her “Single Ladies” video.

Hova could have shown support for his boy a bit earlier, but he still spoke up in his characteristic, far-less-hyperbolic than Kanye manner on both issues this morning on Howard Stern’s radio show. In reference to Kanye’s “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” statement, Jay-Z says:

“It was bad timing, but it was absolutely an honest emotion. We all felt like that. We didn’t feel like Katrina was a natural disaster. We felt like it as an attack on black people. All you saw was black people on the roof with HELP signs. … White people felt like that.”

On the topic of Kanye’s behavior at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009, Jay said:

“It’s bittersweet in a lot of ways,” he said about West’s interruption of Swift’s acceptance speech. “If we look back, everyone would agree that he was right. It was bad timing. It was not her fault. It’s not Taylor Swift’s fault. She didn’t nominate … she didn’t elect herself. She just sat there and she had a dream and she’s seeing that dream being realized, and he had the same dream, so he realizes that now. He was fighting for the integrity of the award, and he knows how hard he works on his videos. It was bad timing, but we agreed.”

Bush has said recently that Kanye’s dis was “one of the worst moments of his presidency.