(But it’s not the first Jay-Z album to come packaged with a telecommunications company jig the man knows how to finesse a bag.) The first official, solo Jay-Z bars since his wife dominated pop culture with a visual album about overcoming infidelity and betrayal at the hands of someone she called the Big Homie. The first time Jay’s admitted to having a therapist. The first Jay-Z album without bids for radio or pandering to current sonic trends. The first time Jay has locked in with just one producer-the exacting veteran No I.D.-for an entire project. “We know the pain is real, but you can’t heal what you never reveal,” he raps on the opener, and then: “You know you owe the truth to all the youth that fell in love with Jay-Z.” That first song’s title? “Kill Jay Z.” So begins the exorcism. Who could’ve known? Not us, as Jay is aware.
To anyone paying this album full attention, though, it’s clear romantic fidelity, betrayal, and shame are just three out of a whole gaggle of demons tormenting the outwardly affable and, until now, seemingly unbothered, Jay-Z. The armchair psychiatrists on Twitter and elsewhere would pin his tossing and turning on the infamous elevator incident that shattered his family’s perfect veneer three years ago. The way some of the album-his thirteenth-and its weightier moments paint the picture, one imagines Jay hadn’t been sleeping well for quite some time. Just the time on the clock, much like Rosebud was just a sled. 4:44 isn’t a numerically-coded ode to his BFF Obama, a reference to his favorite number, a numerology message, nor a Bible verse.
That’s the answer to the grand puzzle the internet spent a month trying to decode, thanks to some crafty, minimalist marketing. But because we've been doing it for so long, it was less uncomfortable.Shawn Carter couldn’t sleep. I'm not saying it wasn't uncomfortable because obviously it was. He continued, We just got to a place where in order for this to work, this can't be fake. Then we had to get to a point of 'Okay, tear this down and let's start from the beginning' … It's the hardest thing I've ever done. Things start happening that the public can see. I just 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 it starts cracking. On rebuilding his relationship with Beyoncé, he said, This is my real life. The entire album touches on racial inequality, fatherhood, his infamous fight with Solange, his mother's coming out, and leaving behind a lasting legacy, but "4:44" is specifically about the fact that he cheated on Beyoncé and all that followed. It's the title track because it's such a powerful song, and I just believe one of the best songs I've ever written. So, it became the title of the album and everything. And I woke up, literally, at 4:44 in the morning, 4:44 a.m., to write this song. He said, '4:44' is a song that I wrote, and it's the crux of the album, just right in the middle of the album.
JAY-Z said he thinks it's one of the best songs he's ever written in an interview with iHeart Radio when the album dropped on June 30, 2017. "4:44" is the fifth song on JAY-Z's newest album. 'Oh no, but I'm gonna do it 'cause I'm ready.' And that's why I say, 'You matured faster than me, I wasn't ready.' Now how are you gonna do it? You've never done this before, no one informs you how to do this.
JAY-Z comes in at about the one-minute mark explaining some of the lyrics behind 4:44's titular song, "4:44." What I thought when I met my dad was, 'Oh, I'm free to love now.' But it's like, OK, yeah, but how are you gonna do it? You want to do it, and I get it. The video opens with a powerful line from Chris Rock saying, "Everyone wants to feel needed on some level." JAY-Z has just released a new video to accompany 4:44 called "Footnotes for 4:44." The video features celebrities like Will Smith, Anthony Anderson, Jesse Williams, Kendrick Lamar, Mahershala Ali, JAY-Z, and others talking about heartbreak, vulnerability, and relationships between black men and black women and how they have learned to navigate them.