Jay-Z’s mum, Gloria Carter, has finally revealed how her superstar son reacted when she came out as a lesbian.
Recall that the rapper addressed his mother’s story in his song, Smile, off his latest album 4:44. “Mama had four kids, but she’s a lesbian / Had to pretend so long that she’s a thespian,” Jay-Z raps. “Had to hide in the closet, so she medicate / Society shame and the pain was too much to take / Cried tears of joy when you fell in love / Don’t matter to me if it’s a him or her.” And at the end of the song, his mother recited a poem she wrote: “Living in the shadow feels like the safe place to be / No harm for them, no harm for me / But life is short, and it’s time to be free / Love who you love, because life isn’t guaranteed,” she said in the spoken word piece.
Speaking for the first time since the song dropped, Gloria revealed how Jay Z reacted when he first learned of her sexuality. “Me and my son, we share a lot of information. I was sitting there and I was telling him one day, I just finally started telling him who I was,” she explained on the D’USSE Friday podcast. “Besides your mother, this is the person that I am. This is the life that I live. My son started actually tearing ’cause he’s like, ‘That had to be a horrible life, Ma.’ I was like, ‘My life was never horrible. It was just different.’ So that made him want to do a song about it.” And, of course, Jay-Z made a song about it. At first, his mother wasn’t sure about it. “The first time I heard the song, I was like, ‘Eh, I don’t know, dude. I ain’t feeling that,'” Gloria recalled.
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