Jay-Z’s mother Gloria Carter has spoken about how she first came out to her son—and how her candid poetry ended up on the rapper’s latest album, 4:44.
"Me and my son share a lot of information, so I was sitting there and I was telling him one day, I just finally started telling him who I was," Carter said during an interview on the D'ussé Friday podcast.
"Besides your mother, this is the person that I am, this is the life that I live,” she continued. “So my son actually started tearing, because he was like, 'That had to be a horrible life, Ma.'
“And I was like, 'My life was never horrible, it was just different.' So that made him want to do a song about it."
Carter spoke about how her poem Living in the Shadows made its way to Jay-Z’s track Smile after a plane journey.
“When I got there I was like, 'I'm gonna help you along,'" Carter said.
"I said, 'Look at this,' and he was like, 'Wow, you wrote this on the plane?' So I said, 'Yeah,' and he said, 'Start reading it.' So I started reading it and he was taping me – I taped it on the phone!"
The deeply personal track is the first time Carter and her son have spoken publicly about her sexuality.
“Mama had four kids, but she’s a lesbian/Had to pretend so long that she’s a thespian,” Jay-Z raps on the widely praised song.
“Had to hide in the closet, so she medicate/Society shame and the pain was too much to take.”
Carter adds in the podcast that she was “never ashamed” of her sexuality but that it was something that the family never discussed.
“Because everybody knows who I am, I don't hide who I am … I'm tired of all the mystery. I'm gonna give it to 'em.
“I don't have to worry about anybody wondering whether I'm in the life or not – I'm gonna tell them."
"Now it's time for me to live my life and be happy, be free."
