Lance “Un” Rivera Answers Jay-Z With Grace—And A Painful Question [Video]

Lance “Un” Rivera responds to Jay-Z’s Roots Picnic freestyle with a remarkably gracious open letter before speaking candidly about trauma, forgiveness, and the 1999 stabbing incident.

Lance “Un” Rivera could have answered Jay-Z’s latest reference to their shared past with anger. Instead, he begins with admiration.

In an open letter read during an interview with The Art of Dialogue, the former music executive recognizes Jay-Z’s transformation from Marcy Projects rapper to one of hip-hop’s most influential figures. Rivera praises the doors he has opened, the possibilities his career represents, and the power his voice still carries in communities that political and cultural institutions often fail to reach. He urges Jay-Z to use that influence to plant “seeds of hope, discipline, ownership, and awareness.”

The generosity of those words makes what follows considerably more affecting.

During his May 30 Roots Picnic performance, Jay-Z used a line about getting beneath someone’s skin to reference the 1999 Kit Kat Club incident that left Rivera stabbed. Jay-Z later pleaded guilty to third-degree assault and received three years of probation. More than a quarter-century later, Rivera believes the episode is still being used whenever Jay-Z wants to reinforce the dangerous side of his public image.

Rivera does not deny Jay-Z’s right to tell his story or profit from his legacy. His objection is more personal: he no longer wants his worst night turned into somebody else’s mythology and marketing. After acknowledging how openly Jay-Z has discussed pain and healing, Rivera asks the question at the heart of the conversation: “He talks about trauma, but what about my trauma?”

There is frustration in his response, but little bitterness. Rivera says he has forgiven Jay-Z and initially hoped to address the matter privately. Even his sharper comments carry the exhaustion of someone asking not for revenge, but to be released from a story that has followed him for decades.

That restraint is what makes the interview so powerful. Rivera offers respect without surrendering his dignity, forgiveness without pretending the damage disappeared, and a reminder that hip-hop’s most celebrated stories of survival can contain victims whose pain rarely receives the same microphone.