Grainy and occluded in places it may have been, but there is little dispute that the great elevator battle of 2014—in which Solange Knowles was filmed beating down on her brother-in-law JAY-Z as her sister Beyoncé calmly looked on—was the greatest clip of A-list-celebrities-fighting-in-elevators security-camera footage ever leaked.
It has long been rumored that the trigger for Solange’s outburst was alleged infidelity on the part of JAY-Z—infidelity was also the inspiration for Beyoncé’s remarkable Lemonade and Jay appears to admit cheating on his new album 4:44—and now Jay has broken his silence on the Standard Hotel slap down, which took place in New York’s Meatpacking District.
Jay was on the podcast “Rap Radar” when he addressed the 2014 battle—but was careful not to allude to the trigger for Solange’s meltdown.
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He said: “We had one disagreement ever. Before and after we’ve been cool. She’s like my sister. I will protect her. That’s my sister, not my sister-in-law, my sister.”
It has long been alleged that Solange was angry over Jay’s infidelity when she went off in the elevator, and Jay appeared to apologize to Beyoncé for his past infidelities as a husband in the title track off his latest album.
“And if my children knew / I don’t even know what I would do / If they ain’t look at me the same / I would probably die with all the shame,” JAY-Z says in the song’s closing verse.
“‘You did what with who?’ / What good is a ménage à trois when you have a soulmate? / ‘You risked that for Blue?’”
“I apologize for all the stillborns / Cause I wasn’t present, your body wouldn’t accept it,” Jay Z raps in one especially candid lyric.
In an interview with iHeartRadio, JAY-Z said of the title track, “I woke up, literally, at 4:44 in the morning, 4:44 AM, to write this song. So it became the title of the album and everything. 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.”
