The music video inspired by Jay-Z’s engagement trip to a strip club
Jay-Z’s private life has been shrouded in mystery almost from the day he became a public figure, and that guard was raised even further after he began dating Cowboy Carter creator Beyoncé. Since 2003, when the pair met, they have kept their relationship and marriage behind closed doors and have, for the most part, managed to keep it that way for over two decades.
That said, in interviews, they occasionally let people in and disclose hidden gems about their lives and what they get up to when they’re not making music or at important events getting swarmed by the prying paparazzi.
In 2013, following the release of her self-titled fifth studio album, Beyoncé spoke with Essence magazine and Contact Music about some of the tracks on the project and the inspiration behind them. The body of work was accompanied by a visual album that was also based on a series of actual events.
One of the songs on Beyoncé was a throwback to a night in 2008, the year that she and Jay-Z officially got engaged and married. When the Brooklyn lyricist initially proposed to the Houston vocalist, he presented her with a classic diamond ring. However, she wasn’t too keen on the traditional representation of marriage, and while speaking with Essence, when asked about why she didn’t want a ring, she explained, “It’s just material, and it’s just silly to me.”
Instead, the power couple got matching tattoos with the Roman numeral four “IV” on their ring fingers. For Bey, this is a special number as both of their birthdays include that digit, with their birthdays being September 4th and December 4th, respectively.
According to the ‘Upgrade U’ singer, Hov proposed to her on his birthday (December 4th), and in celebration, she took him out to party in Paris. Recalling the day, Bey told Contact Music, “The day that I got engaged was my husband’s birthday, and I took him to Crazy Horse, and I remember thinking, ‘Damn, these girls are fly.’ I just thought it was the ultimate sexy show. I was like, ‘I wish I was up there, I wish I could perform that for my man.’ So that’s what I did for the video!” — the video was for the track ‘Partition.’
Beyoncé didn’t just take inspiration from her and Jay-Z’s trip to the cabaret but also filmed large segments of the music video in Paris’ iconic Crazy Horse Saloon. In a previous conversation with Seventeen Beyoncé, she expressed her aversion to early marriage, admitting, “I really don’t believe that you will love the same thing when you’re 20 as you do at 30. So that was my rule: before the age of 25, I would never get married.”
Although the video for ‘Partition’, which featured Jay, showed two celebrities in love and at the height of happiness, it is fair to say that this image didn’t last very long as, within a year, at the 2014 Met Gala in New York, footage was leaked to TMZ of Beyoncé’s younger sister, Solange, physically attacking Jay-Z in a hotel elevator.
The public soon found out the pair were experiencing issues in their marriage. However, irrespective of this issue, the pair have continued to be husband and wife, and fans are now aware that ‘Partition’ is a Beyoncé re-enactment of an engagement celebration at Crazy Horse in Paris.