Jay-Z previously opened up about his reaction when his mother Gloria Carter came out to him, with the rapper revealing that he “cried” out of happiness.
Over the weekend, Jay-Z’s mother married her longtime partner Roxanne Wiltshire in a New York City ceremony, according to TMZ.
The event was reportedly attended by a number of celebrity guests, including Jay-Z, his wife Beyoncé, and their eldest daughter, Blue Ivy. The “Single Ladies” singer’s mom Tina Knowles was also reportedly in attendance, as were Robin Roberts, Kelly Rowland and Tyler Perry.
The marriage report comes after Jay-Z first opened up about his mother coming out to him during his 2017 song “Smile,” in which he sang: “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.
“Cried tears of joy when you fell in love/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.”
In 2018, during an appearance on David Letterman’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction series on Netflix, the Grammy winner revealed that he’d actually cried during the moment out of happiness for his mother.
“Imagine having to live your life as someone else and you think you’re protecting your kids,” he told Letterman. “For her to sit in front of me and tell me ‘I think I love someone,’ I really cried…I cried because I was so happy for her that she was free.”
At the time, Jay-Z also recalled that he’d written the song about his mother the day after she’d come out to him.
“She told me. I made the song the next day,” he said.
While speaking to Letterman, Jay-Z also revealed that he’d known about his mother’s sexuality before their conversation, but that it had been the first time he’d heard her say she loved her partner.
“I knew but this was the first time we had the conversation. And the first time I heard her say she loved her partner,” he recalled. “Like, ‘I feel like I love somebody.’ But she said: ‘I feel like,’ she held that little bit back still. She didn’t say: ‘I’m in love.’ She said: ‘I feel like I love someone.’ And I cried.
“I don’t even believe in crying because you’re happy, I don’t even know what that is. What is that?”
Carter also opened up about the moment she came out to her son during an appearance on the D’Usse Friday podcast in 2017, where she also reflected on Jay-Z’s emotional response.
“I was sitting there and I was telling him one day. I just finally started telling him who I was. Besides your mother, this is the person that I am, you know? This is the life that I lived,” she recalled of their conversation.
According to Carter, Jay-Z started “tearing [up]” because he felt bad that she’d kept a part of herself hidden for so long.
“So my son started actually, like, tearing [up] because he was like: ‘That had to be a horrible life, Ma.’ I was like: ‘My life was never horrible. It was just different.’ So that made him want to do a song about it,” she said.
In addition to Jay-Z, Carter has three more children, daughters Andrea Carter, and Michelle Carter and son Eric Carter.
