White House: Obama Not Involved in Jay-Z and Beyoncé Cuba Trip (video)

The White House has denied claims that President Obama personally cleared Jay-Z and Beyoncé's recent trip to Cuba.

Press secretary Jay Carney addressed the controversy surrounding the rapper and his wife's visit to Cuba, insisting that the US leader was not involved.

Jay-Z made the claim in his track Open Letter in an attempt to silence critics who said the trip breached a 50-year-old travel embargo on US citizens going to Cuba.

In the song, the Watch the Throne hitmaker raps: "Boy from the hood, I got White House clearance. Obama said 'chill, you gonna get me impeached. You don't need this [expletive] anyway [sic]. Chill with me on the beach."

Carney revealed that it was the US Treasury that granted the power couple licence to travel to the Caribbean nation after a journalist asked about the lyrics at a press conference.

In a one-minute video posted online, the assembled press struggle to contain their laughter as the female journalist repeated Jay-Z's lyrics. Beyoncé and Jay-Z were in Cuba to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary.

A Treasury official confirmed that the pair's visitwas part of a cultural exchange that did not violate the US economic embargo, which states that US citizens cannot go to Cuba and spend money without permission from the government.

The embargo was brought in, along with a host of economic sanctions, after Fidel Castro took power in 1959.