The reason why Jay-Z can’t listen to his ‘4:44’ album
4:44, Jay-Z’s 13th album, was a massive success. Released during the summer of 2017, it went straight to number one in the charts, was widely critically praised, and, ultimately, secured Hov with several more Grammy nominations to his name. People loved it, but, even so, its very creator finds that he is unable to listen to it today.
Speaking to GQ in a newly published feature, Jay reflected on how the process of making 4:44 “released a lot” in him. But in an odd way, that’s why he can’t listen to it. It was just too personal.
“It’s the album that I was always afraid to make,” he admitted. “Just pure and vulnerable, the real interior thoughts.”
4:44 tackled some difficult subjects for Jay, be it racism in America, his mother’s sexuality, or the rumours surrounding his own infidelities outside his marriage with Beyoncé. But arguably it was what he went through as a kid that most shaped the album.
“It was a lot of trauma,” Jay reflected of his upbringing. “A lot of loss, a lot of seeing things that nine-year-olds shouldn’t be seeing.”
Growing up in Brooklyn, a young Jay-Z had to deal with his dad leaving his family while he was still just 11. Violence was everywhere, and, as a 12-year-old, Jay ended up shooting his own brother. Before long he was a teenage drug dealer.
All of this left its mark on Jay, but, as he reflected to GQ, it took a while for all of that trauma to reveal itself. “We tuck it away and we bury it,” he said, “and then it shows up in different ways.”
Noting that his interviewer was much younger than he is, he insisted that they’ll eventually discover that trauma “shows up later in life in different ways, and you won’t know why you’re acting out in certain ways.”
“And it’s because of those things that are buried deep,” he said, “and whatever triggers it can cause any sort of response in your relationship and the relationship with your family. At some point you got to figure out how you’re going to navigate the world.”
At the core of it, that’s what makes 4:44 so difficult for Jay to listen to now. While, on the one hand, it served as a release, helping him to work through some stuff, it nonetheless is too raw to return to.