Jay-Z: Making music with Beyonce was therapy after infidelity
Both musicians had indicated he had been unfaithful to her on their respective albums.
Jay-Z has spoken candidly about the troubles in his marriage to Beyonce and said that making music together served as therapy.
The rapper, real name Shawn Carter, admitted he had been unfaithful to his wife in an interview with the New York Times Style Magazine, saying his rough childhood had prompted him to build up walls.
He said: “You have to survive. So you go into survival mode, and when you go into survival mode what happen?
“In my case, like it’s, it’s deep. And then all the things happen from there: infidelity …”
On his most recent album 4:44, he rapped: “Look, I apologise/Often womanise/Took for my child to be born to see through a woman’s eyes.”
Rumours of his infidelity first surfaced in 2013 when a video of Beyonce’s sister Solange attacking him in a hotel lift while his wife looked on appeared online.
Beyonce’s album Lemonade added further fuel to the rumours when she sang: “Looking at my watch he should’ve been home/ Today I regret the night I put that ring on.”
She continued: “He only want me when I’m not there/ He better call Becky with the good hair.”
He told the magazine: “We were using our art almost like a therapy session. And we started making music together.
“And then the music she was making at that time was further along. So her album came out as opposed to the joint album that we were working on.
“We still have a lot of that music. And this is what it became. There was never a point where it was like, ‘I’m making this album’. I was right there the entire time.”
Asked if the albums caused each other pain, he said: “Of course. And both very, very uncomfortable, but the best place in the hurricane is like in the middle of it. We were sitting in the eye of that hurricane.”
“And, you know, at the end of the day we really have a healthy respect for one another’s craft. I think she’s amazing.
“You know, most people walk away, and like the divorce rate is like 50% or something ’cause most people can’t see themselves.
“The hardest thing is seeing pain on someone’s face that you caused, and then have to deal with yourself.
” Most people don’t want to do that. You don’t want to look inside yourself. And so you walk away.”
