Jay-Z has said that he cried tears of joy when his mother, Gloria Carter, came out to him as a lesbian last year, because she was finally free to be her authentic self after decades of living in the closet.
Carter came out to the world at large in a verse in a duet with her son on the track “Smile” from his album 4:44.
“Cried tears of joy when you fell in love,” he raps on the song, “Don’t matter to me if it’s a him or her/I just wanna see you smile through all the hate.”
“That’s a real story,” he says in a promo released today for the upcoming episode of the Netflix show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman.
“I cried, because I was so happy for her that she was free,” he tells Letterman.
It is a sentiment also found in Gloria Carter’s verse in the outro of the song.
“Living in the shadow/Can you imagine what kind of life it is to live?” She asks. “In the shadows people see you as happy and free/Because that’s what you want them to see…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.”
Jay-Z, who says he believes his mother felt she had to lie about her orientation to “protect her kids” and not embarrass them, revealed that she came out to him while he was making 4:44
“I made the song the next day,” he says.
“I knew (she was gay),” Jay-Z says, “but this was the first time we had the conversation, and the first time I heard her say that she loved her partner.”
“She said, ’I feel like I love someone,’ and I just cried,” he adds. “I don’t even believe in crying ’cause you (are) happy, I don’t even know what that is? What is that?”
The episode will debut on Netflix this Friday, April 6.