Jay-Z wants to set the record straight: He and wife Beyoncé were not making a statement when they sat during the national anthem at the Super Bowl.

Rather, he claims, he was focusing on his job as a producer.

“It actually wasn’t — sorry,” the music mogul responded while at a Columbia University Q&A when asked if he’d wanted to make a political statement, “I’d tell you … I’d say, ‘Yes, that’s what I’ve done.’ I think people know that about me.”

“What happened was, we got there, we were sitting, and now the show’s about to start,” he began. “My wife was with me and so she says to me, ‘I know this feeling right here.’ Like, she’s super-nervous because she’s performed at Super Bowls before. I haven’t.”

“So we get there and we immediately jump into artist mode … now I’m really just looking at the show. Did the mic start? Was it too low to start? … I had to explain to them [that] as an artist, if you don’t feel the music, you can’t really reach that level.”

He added, “So the whole time we’re sitting there, we’re talking about the performance, and then right after that, Demi [Lovato] comes out and we’re talking about how beautiful she looked, and how she sounds and what she’s going through, and her life — for her to be on the stage, we were so proud of her. And then it finished and then my phone rang. And it was like, ‘You know you didn’t …’ I’m like, ‘What?’”

LOL! Well… given the fact that nearly 100 million people tuned in on Sunday, wouldn’t you be super focused on producing a good show?