Jay-Z has opened up about learning that his mother, Gloria Carter, was a lesbian, sharing the intimate experience with David Letterman on his long-form Netflix talk show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.
The rapper, whose birth name is Shawn Carter, even wrote a song about his mum's coming out, including it 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," he raps on the track, titled "Smile".
“Had to hide in the closet, so she medicate/Society shame and the pain was too much to take.”
Speaking to Letterman, Jay-Z expressed his regret at his mother having to hide her authentic self for so long.
“Imagine having lived your life for someone else, and you think you’re protecting your kids. For my mother to have to live as someone that she wasn’t and hide and protect her kids… and didn’t want to embarrass her kids, you know, for all this time," he said.
Jay-Z on David Letterman's 'My Next Guest Needs No Introduction'. Source: Netflix
He continued: “For her to sit in front of me and tell me 'I think I love someone', I mean, I really cried. That’s a real story. I cried because I was so happy for her that she was free."
“This happened eight months ago, when the album was being made. She just told me, and I made the song the next day.”
Gloria Carter has previously spoken about her decision to come out, saying that living in the closet had made her life "different".
"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," she 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."
