Rap mogul Jay-Z is standing behind Def Jam colleague Kanye West in the wake of the latter’s comments during Friday’s telethon to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina. As previously reported, West declared that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” and that America is set up “to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible.”

“I’m backing Kanye 100%,” Jay-Z tells Billboard by phone from London. “This is America. You should be able to say what you want to say. We have freedom of speech.”

Jay-Z admits he shares some of West’s views about the slow response to the disaster. “It’s really numbing,” he says. “You can’t believe it’s happening in America. You wonder, what’s going on? Why were people so slow to react? I don’t understand it.”

Although Jay-Z says he hasn’t “spoken to anyone about doing a concert event” to benefit Katrina victims, he says he wants to speak with Sean “Diddy” Combs about starting a fund exclusively to aid African-Americans in times of crisis. “Just in case anything like this happens in the future, we can do what the elder Bush and [former President Bill] Clinton are doing for our people specifically.”

Credit: Reuters/Billboard