When Jay-Z celebrated his mother Gloria Carter’s sexuality in “Smile” off his new album 4:44, some people were surprised but now Gloria is talking about how she came out to him.
“I just finally started telling Jay who I was. Besides your mother, this is the person that I am. This is the life that I live,” she told Dusse Friday.
“So my son started actually tearing. He’s like, ‘That had to be a horrible life, ma’. I was like, my life was never horrible,” Carter went on. “It was just different. So that made him want to do a song about it and the first time I heard the song I was like, eh, I don’t know dude. I ain’t feeling that.”
— Whoopi Goldberg confronts Sarah Huckabee Sanders on ‘The View’ —
In the song, Jay-Z raps, “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 reveals on the track that his mother found love and he cried happy tears when she did.
“Don’t matter to me if it’s a him or her/ I just wanna see you smile through all the hate/ Marie Antoinette, baby, let ’em eat cake.”
Gloria says that she didn’t tell Jay-Z for so long because “it was something that was never discussed.”
“I was never ashamed of me. I’m tired of all the mystery. I’m gonna give it to ‘em,” she said. “I don’t have to worry about anybody wondering if I’m in the life or not. So now maybe you can focus on the phenomenal things I do, so focus on that. Now it’s time for me to be free.”
