For years, a meme has circulated the internet displaying a headshot of Troy Aikman and Jay-Z side-by-side. In these headshots, the Hall of Fame quarterback looks remarkably like Jay-Z in the face. It’s easily the closest cross-racial lookalikes we have in popular culture (if you’d like to see a close second, please look up Future and Meryl Streep).
Until recently, neither Jay-Z nor Aikman had addressed the viral meme comparing their likeness. Fortunately, ESPN’s Pablo Torre did the hard hitting journalism and asked Aikman about the meme on an episode of Pardon The Interruption, which Torre then brought up on his podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out.
.@pablotorre really asked @TroyAikman if he was aware that he looks like a white Jay-Z.
His answer was incredible.
pic.twitter.com/QeZV6R2oxo
— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) October 3, 2023
Oddly enough, Aikman never explicitly states that he thinks he looks like Jay-Z, only that the meme is so good that he initially thought the images could be manipulated by AI. Fortunately, this meme predates the AI revolution, so we can safely assume Aikman thinks he looks like a white Jay-Z.
Aikman mentioned the meme has popped onto his feed a few times, so hopefully, it’s inspired him to get into a few Jay-Z albums. America needs the two men to take a photo together to finally give us a real, side-by-side look. Until then, we’d like to thank Pablo Torre for getting to the bottom of this.