Last week, Jay-Z spoke to Elliott Wilson and Brian “B.Dot” Miller from the Rap Radar podcast about his fights with Solange and Kanye as well as his controversial “Jewish” people. A second part of that interview was released yesterday in which Hov addressed his mother’s coming out, Blue Ivy’s verse on a 4:44 bonus track, his former beef with the late Prodigy, and the first time he met Amy Winehouse.
Like any proud dad, Jay-Z bragged about his daughter Blue Ivy’s verse on “Blue’s Freestyle/We Family.”
“I’m talking about amazing pockets,” he said, adding that there’s a five-minute video of her recording the song. “She understands the concept of a hook, she’s five… I was like, ‘what the fuck is going on in here?’”
Jay-Z also described his mother Gloria Carter’s reaction to hearing “Smile,” the 4:44 track in which he reveals that she’s gay. “My mom’s been a dope person her whole life,” he said. “We had a beautiful conversation…. When she first heard the song, she said, ‘Absolutely not.’ But I said, ‘This is so important. So many people in the world, hiding and things like this, and that’s all I say about that.’ And that’s how we spoke about this song. I’m so happy with the person that she’s become.”
Later, he spoke about mental health during a conversation about the death of Chester Bennington, who he collaborated with on 2004’s Collision Course. “I think that we can use it and hopefully, as a society, we use that to go forward…people can start getting help,” he said, adding later: “Someone somewhere could be looking at Chester and be like, ‘Man, I wasn’t feeling so good and I need to get some help or I need to talk to somebody about it.”
The discussion about Bennington led to one about Amy Winehouse. “She was telling us, she was writing the songs to our face. ‘They’re trying to make me go to rehab, I’m not going,’ like, what? You have to go!” Jay-Z said before describing the first time he met her, at New York City’s Spotted Pig restaurant where she was drinking heavily and “stuttering.” “‘I looked her, and I was like, ‘stay with us,’” he said. “The first time we hung out, I said, ‘stay with us.’”
Wilson and Miller also asked about the late Prodigy, whom Jay-Z feuded with in the early 2000s.
Prodigy, there was obviously no control over what happened to him, but we gotta take care of ourselves. I had super respect for Prodigy. In order for me to really spar with you, I gotta respect you. I sampled him for my first album, so you know I was aware of him and had respect for him. He and I spoke before he passed; I saw him in the club maybe five years ago. He just came over and we kicked it. It wasn’t about nothing. Just sad, you know? Blessings to his family. Young, young man….
Watch the full interview below if you’re a TIDAL subscriber.
