Jay-Z's new album 4:44, which dropped Friday, covers a lot of personal ground for the rapper and the love of his life — including the ups and downs of their relationship, infidelity, and parenthood. In the album's title track, Jay raps about both one of the highest and lowest points of their marriage: Beyoncé's miscarriage, as well as the twins she gave birth to earlier this month.
In one verse, he says, "I've seen the innocence leave your eyes / I still mourn this death, I apologize for all the stillborns / 'Cause I wasn't present, your body wouldn't accept it." It's not clear whether this means that Bey has had more miscarriages beyond the one reported, but the 47-year-old father of three does seem to be blaming himself for the tragedy.
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In another verse, the mogul raps about the miracle of the couple's newborn babies: "Look, I apologize, often womanize / Took for my child to be born / See through a woman's eyes / Took for these natural twins to believe in miracles." When he says "natural twins," he could be implying that his wife did not undergo IVF, though we clearly can't say for sure.
Of course, this isn't the first time the couple has addressed Beyoncé's miscarriage. Two days after the birth of Blue in January 2012, JAY-Z released "Glory," addressed to the newborn. In the track, he refers to the pregnancy his wife lost: "False alarms and false starts / All made better by the sound of your heart /All the pain of the last time / I prayed so hard it was the last time." He also rapped, "Last time the miscarriage was so tragic / We was afraid you disappeared / But nah, baby you magic."
A year later, Beyoncé herself opened up about the loss in her HBO documentary Life Is But a Dream. "Being pregnant was very much like falling in love," she said in the doc. "You are so overjoyed. There’s no words that can express having a baby growing inside of you, so of course you want to scream it out and tell everyone." But early complications caused her to lose the child. "I flew back to New York to get my check up — and no heartbeat... Literally the week before I went to the doctor, everything was fine, but there was no heartbeat." She added, "The pain and trauma just makes it mean so much more to get an opportunity to bring life into the world."
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Bey would go on to talk about the tragedy in the spoken word section titled "Apathy" on her visual album Lemonade last year.
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