Jay-Z’s album, 4:44, didn’t just piss off Kim Kardashian over the Kanye diss track. He also upset countless fans with his lyrical confession of cheating on Beyonce repeatedly.
A lot of good things, like Jay-Z’s mom coming out in the song “Smile,” were overshadowed by the extent of that confession.
Well now Jay-Z’s taking steps to clear the air — or, at least, to be more specific about some things. And he’s so serious that he’s not even rapping this time:
Okay, so Jay-Z recorded a video commentary for the titular song of his 13th album, 4:44.
Jay-Z has a lot to say, so buckle up.
(Metaphorically — please do not read this while driving)
“This is my real life.”
We all know that artists use their real lives to influence their art, but Jay-Z makes it more obvious than most.
And he also just spells out everything — about his cheating and the efforts to repair the damage that it had done.
“I just ran into this place and we built this big, beautiful mansion of a relationship that wasn’t totally built on the 100 percent truth, and it starts cracking.”
That’s an indirect way to refer to the old “a relationship needs a solid foundation” line.
But it’s clearly from the heart and it’s beautiful.
“Things start happening that the public can see.”
Honestly, we wonder if we’d have ever really known for sure if not for Lemonade and 4:44.
But it’s usually better to just come forward with things than to try to keep things hidden.
(And, especially with Jay-Z and Beyonce, there’s always the chance that someone was trying to blackmail him or them behind the scenes)
“Then we had to get to a point of, ‘OK, tear this down and let’s start from the beginning."”
Sometimes you do just have to scrap things — in this case, their public image as a perfect couple.
Jay-Z goes on to explain exactly how hard all of this has been for him.
“Remember we just talked about me: I’m from Marcy Projects. I’ve been shot at.”
Yikes.
Though, to be clear, we imagine that it was still harder for Beyonce.
But we get it — fixing all of this is tough on Jay-Z, too.
“But nothing is harder than this. By far. I’m telling you, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
You can tell that he means it.
“Most humans, us, you know what I mean? We’re not willing to put ourselves through that. Most people give up.”
Okay, we know that Jay-Z is being very serious here and pouring his heart out, but this made us chuckle.
You know that there are all kinds of wild conspiracy theories about celebrities.
Some say that they’re all clones or robots or lizard people.
So anyone who thinks that NASA keeps child sex slaves on Mars or whatever probably looks at that line where he says “most humans” as a slip of the (forked?) tongue, admitting that he’s a lizard person from below the Earth’s crust.
But, as for his comment about giving up? We’d have given up at the first sign of trouble, so good for him and Beyonce.
Especially before this happened:
Jay-Z confirmed that he (of course!) played the album for Beyonce early on.
He also explains why:
“We just got a place where, in order for this to work, this can’t be fake. Not one ounce.”
And, naturally, you’d want your wife’s approval before you go into so much detail.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t uncomfortable because obviously it was.”
Honestly, it’s amazing that they’re going so far to make it work.
Most people would have just split up by this point, and usually no one would blame them.
