American rapper, Jay Z revealed how he reacted after his mom, Gloria Carter confessed she was gay and was already in love with another woman.
Gloria Carter came out on Jay Z’s 2017 song “Smile,” which featured her poem “Livin in the Shadows.”
The rap mogul says he’d known his mother was gay, but they discussed it for the first time eight months ago while working on his 4:44 album which he featured his mom in one of his songs, smile.
JayZ raps about the moment in the song Smile, on his latest album 4:44.
“Mama had four kids, but she’s a lesbian/Had to pretend so long that she’s a thespian. Had to hide in the closet, so she medicate/Society shame and the pain was too much to take.”
He said his mother had to live as someone she wasn’t because she didn’t want to embarrass her children.
The rapper said her disclosure forced out tears of joy from him.
Speaking in an interview with David Letterman on his new Netflix show. Jay Z said;
“For her to sit in front of me and tell me ‘I think I love someone’ … I really cried,” the rapper said in a clip from the yet to be aired interview. I cried because I was so happy for her that she was free.
“I don’t even believe in crying because you’re happy. I don’t even know what that is.”
He further spoke about how she must have felt on having to hide the truth. He said, “Imagine having lived your life for someone else.”
“And you think you’re protecting your kids. And for my mother to have to live as someone that she wasn’t and hide and like, protect her kids — and didn’t want to embarrass her kids, and you know, for all this time,” he said.
