Jay-Z gets candid about his marriage to Beyoncé in ‘Footnotes for 4:44,’ an 11-minute film about the title track on his ‘4:44’ album.
The clip features interviews with Will Smith, Meek Mill, Kendrick Lamar, Michael B. Jordan, Aziz Ansari and, of course, Jay.
In the clip, Jay talks talks about how his marriage wasn’t as picture-perfect as often portrayed.
“What I thought, when I met my dad, was, ‘Oh, I’m free to love now! But it’s like, ‘Yeah, but how are you gonna do it? You wanna do it, I get it, but how are you gonna do it? You’ve never won this before. No one informs you how to do it. You don’t even have the tools to do it.’ ‘I don’t know. But I’m gonna do it.’ That’s why I say, ‘You matured faster than me. I wasn’t ready.’”
He continues:
“This is my real life,” he adds. “I ran into this place and we built this big, beautiful mansion of a relationship that wasn’t totally built on the 100 percent truth, and then it starts cracking, and then things start happening that the public can see.”
While they were able to get back on the same page, Jay says it took some real moments of truth and honesty to make it work.
“We had to go to a point where it was like, ‘Tear this down and let’s start from the beginning,’” he says. “It’s hard. Remember, I’m from Marcy Projects. [Been] shot at. Nothing is harder than this. By far, I’m telling you, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Most humans, us, we’re not willing to put ourselves through that. Most people give up.”
According to Jay, Beyoncé first heard “4:44” after it was recorded.
“I just played it,” he says. “We got to a place where we’re like, ‘In order for this to work, this can’t be fake, not one ounce.’ I’m not saying it wasn’t uncomfortable, because obviously, it was, but because we’ve been doing this for so long, it was less uncomfortable.”
You can watch ‘Footnotes for ‘4:44’ below.
