Jay-Z Responds in Song to Critics of Cuba Trip

Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press Jay-Z and Beyoncé in Cuba.

Jay-Z lashed out on Thursday at members of Congress who have raised questions about the legality of his recent trip to Cuba with Beyoncé, his wife. He released a scathing rap aimed at those critics and suggested he had been falsely accused of breaking the law because of his friendship with President Obama.

The rapper mocked the two Miami Republicans â€" Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart â€" who demanded last week that the Treasury Department explain why the trip was licensed by the American government. Under the longtime embargo, Americans are not allowed to spend money in Cuba “unless authorized by a general or specific license” by the Office of Foreign Asset Control.

On Wednesday, the Treasury Department said the trip had been officially sanctioned as an educational exchange. Though the couple were seen wining and dining in Havana to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary, Jay-Z and Beyoncé also met with a theater group and visited an art institute on the trip.

In the lyrics of “Open Letter,” which was released online, Jay-Z took the politicians to task for suggesting the trip was illegal:

Wanna give me jail time and a fine
Fine, let me commit a real crime
I might buy a kilo for Chief Keef
Out of spite, I just might flood these streets.

Jay-Z, a brilliant businessmen who has founded several lucrative ventures, also suggested supporters of restrictions on trade with Cuba were hypocrites, since the United States trades with China:

I’m in Cuba, I love Cubans
This communist talk is so confusing
When it’s from China, the very mic that I’m using

He also said he had become a target because he was “getting too much bread” and was a “boy from the hood” with “White House clearance.”

Beyoncé and Jay-Z were greeted by big crowds as they strolled hand in hand through the Havana last week. They ate at some of the city’s best restaurants, danced to Cuban music, walked through historic Old Havana and posed for pictures with admiring Cubans.

On Friday, Representatives Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart said in a letter to Adam Szubin, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, that the trip looked like a tourist visit. “Despite the clear prohibition against tourism in Cuba, numerous press reports described the couple’s trip as tourism, and the Castro regime touted it as such in its propaganda,” the letter said.

But the Treasury Department responded that site-seeing was allowed during the off-hours on an educational visit and Jay-Z and Beyoncé had fulfilled their educational obligations by meeting with the La Colmenita theater group and talking with students at the Superior Art Institute.