Beyoncé and Jay Z met when she was 18 and he, 30. They married in secret and with only forty guests in New York in 2008. They have three children and a combined net worth of $ 1.4 billion, according to Forbes. With crossed songs, they brought out all the deceptions, so that music was their best marriage therapy
The music worked as an antidote. Beyoncé (37) and Jay Z (49) sang about love and not only got ahead as a couple, but also answered fans and the press.
Infidelity and scandals were not going to destroy their marriage, family, much less, the emporium they had formed. Because the musical path of Queen B – the pop queen of our era – was too successful for Jay Z, her producer, partner, husband, and main ally to end up throwing it all away.
But that would be later… Because before meeting Beyonce, Shawn Corey Carter – Jay Z – was the typical upward rapper from Brooklyn with a desire for producer and business talent. He had a stain: he had been charged and punished for stabbing a music producer who had hacked his work.
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles, meanwhile, was from Houston (Texas) and it was named in homage to the Gallic origins of his mother. She had shown her skills with only seven years in a school contest and her parents had left everything to boost her career. With Destiny’s Child group, between the late 90s and the beginning of the new century, the brunette knew the success: 60 million records sold. Although the comings and goings that ended in the dissolution of the band, they depressed it strongly, as I would explain later.
With a single boyfriend declared before her husband – from 13 to 17 – Beyoncé knew that if lasting love came as soon as a success, there was no need to let it go. That’s why at 18 when she met Jay Z-30, he was caught in body and soul.
It was in 1999, while the musician directed it in the video clip “I got that”, by rapper Amil. However, they started sneaking out only in 2002, when Jay Z released the 03 Bonnie & Clyde theme with Beyoncé as a guest star. “All I need in this life of sin is me and my girlfriend,” said the song that honors the most iconic couple in American history. And that also meant their first work together.
The following year, Beyoncé released “Dangerously in Love”, her first solo album, where Jay Z collaborated on two songs and advanced the details of a romance as inevitable as the consecration that was coming. In fact, “Crazy in Love”, the first single, remained eight weeks in the number one spot. And so the pop star went down in history as the first woman to position an album and a song in the Top 1 of the United States and United Kingdom rankings, surpassed only by “The Beatles”.
In gold, with mega cleavage, mini shorts and firm curlers, Queen B chose the MTV Music Awards in June 2004 to show for the first time with whom she had been her boyfriend for two years. In white and with a Panama hat, Jay Z celebrated every moment of the confirmation of a romance that was commented on throughout Hollywood.
They married four years later, in April and with an intimate and secret ceremony in their own apartment in the Tribecca neighborhood in New York. It was before only 40 guests, among which were George Clooney and Chris Martin. And the logistics of privacy was such that not a single wedding photo was leaked until 2014. Just then they themselves shared some, on the big screen and during the ‘On the Run tour’, while singing in duet, between the United States and Paris. The intention? Silence rumors of a separation, when not everything was perfect between the two.
Infidelity, a struggle, and a thousand apologies
“I have a surprise,” Beyonce announced on August 2011, putting her hands on her belly. This was how she communicated her first pregnancy, during the MTV Music Awards. “I want them to feel the love that is growing inside me,” she added a while later, from the stage and after dancing as only a few can do it to the theme of “Love on top”.
Blue Ivy, their first daughter, was born in January of the following year, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, and after they booked a flat and set up an unprecedented security operation. “Welcome to the world, Princess Carter. She loves you, your aunt Rih,” wrote Rihanna on Twitter. Minutes before Gwyneth Paltrow came forward to communicate his name: “Welcome to the Blue world. We love you!”
The arrival of the twins? Pretty much later. Beyoncé counted the pregnancy on her Instagram account, which in 2017 had 92.3 million followers. “We have been blessed twice. We are incredibly grateful that our family will grow by two. We thank you for your good wishes,” she posted on the social network with an ethereal and florid photo, which emulated the goddess of fertility.
Sir and Rumi were born in midsummer, at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. And their mother presented them with a month of life, in a photo that had the same aesthetic that she had used to announce the pregnancy.
Anyway, while motherhood ran through the lanes of abundance, the love scandals – those that the heart press likes so much – began to grow around Beyoncé and Jay Z. Some say that to fail in the launch of the streaming platform Tidal was what moved the foundations of a couple that seemed solid. Others speak of the natural wear and tear of two megastars working together. Many pointed to the jars of honey of success. The truth is that already averaging 2014 rumors of infidelity hit the couple.
But the sayings have added an image. And what could only be talking, took a scandalous nuance. After the 2014 Met Gala, Jay Z and Solange – his sister-in-law – struggled in an elevator at the Manhattan Standard hotel, where the after-party was held.
TMZ, experts in this type of issues, published the video of the security cameras and there were no doubts: blows, shoves and insults – at least presumably, because the tape is mute – in the presence of Beyonce, perhaps resigned. And all while the couple’s bodyguard prevented the diva’s sister from continuing to attack the rapper when the elevator doors opened and the flashes fired on them.
What did the couple do? He began to make organic that natural habit of exposing his infidelities through his songs.
In April 2016, Beyoncé launched “Lemonade”, where she speaks openly about her husband’s lovers. Even on the tittle “Sorry”, she was incredulous: “Better call Becky, the one with pretty hair.” All for fans to get rid of the lucubrations and discover that the designated lover was “Rachel Roy”, a designer, and ex-wife of a former partner of Jay Z. All ex, because her name, in fact, had sounded after the elevator incident. And just after being syndicated by fans, the famous Becky picked up the glove and posted an irony on her “pretty hair” on social media.
And if that had been Beyonce’s most concrete allusion to the heartbreak of recent years, Jay-Z’s response took a year to arrive… but it was blunt. 4:44 was called the rapper’s album in which he apologized for infidelity. His work went through the charts without sorrow or glory, but it was a lyrical response of great symbolic value. In fact, this is the name because the two were born a 4 and even married a 4 of the 4. “Look, I apologize. Often womanizer,” he cries on the subject that bears the name of the record.
However, after months of couple psychotherapy and the defiant arrival of the twins, Jay Z decided to speak with the press for the first time in 2017.
He did it in an interview with Dean Baquer, of ‘The New York Times’, and with success as part of the drama. “I had to survive. Then I went into a survival mode and what happened? I turned off my emotions. I couldn’t connect. And then all things happen from there: infidelity, for example,” he slipped. But he also added: “The hardest thing is to see the pain you have caused in the person you love. And then, deal with yourself.”
On the other hand, in the extensive interview, he confirmed what only some imagined. “We were using our art as a therapy session. We started making music together. We still have a lot of that music. She never told me: ‘I’m making this album.’ I was always there,” the rapper added to confirm that all that Roundtrip dialectic and musical was as meaningful and visceral, as agreed.
That same year, Jay Z talked about the elevator incident with his sister-in-law. And he did it plainly for the Rap Radar portal. “She is not my sister-in-law, she is my sister. We have always had a wonderful relationship. I have been arguing and fighting with my brothers all my life. The only thing that happens is that, because of who we are, these things are magnified and taken out of context. But it was nothing,” he said and closed the issue.
But in addition, to reaffirm that the crisis was over, last year the couple celebrated the ten years of marriage with the formation of a duo: The Carters. They launched ‘Everything is love’ and went back on tour together and as a family (as they had in 2014), now with OTR II.
This 2019 finds them united, celebrating the success of Homecoming, the Netflix documentary film about Beyoncé, which together with the live album, reviews and intrudes in its concert of the Coachella Festival, of the previous year. On the other hand, the lights dazzle them from the world premiere of the remake of “The Lion King”, with Beyoncé in Nala’s voice for the songs of the original version. But above all, with Spirit, the premiere theme of the new version of Disney, whose video clip plays with his daughter Blue Ivy.
So, can art be the cure for that intoxicating success? Because there are not a few Beyoncé’s 23 Grammy Awards (with the historic record of 66 nominations), nor its 26 MTV Music Awards, beating Madonna herself. There are also a few of the 19 Grammy Awards that rapper counts on his showcases. Nor the pair’s combined net worth, which reaches $1.4 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates.
Nothing is small if we speak of the sins of success and money… although, the Carters know: music like catharsis can save love from everything imperfect.
