Gloria Carter Opens Up About Coming Out on Jay-Z’s Song, “Smile”

Nearly three months after Gloria Carter’s emotional revelation on her son’s highly anticipated “4:44” album, Jay-Z’s mother is speaking out about the entire ordeal.

“I just finally started telling (Jay-Z) who I was. Besides your mother, this is the person that I am. This is the life that I live,” Carter said on the D’USSE Friday podcast. “So my son started actually tearing. ‘Cause he’s like, ‘That had to be a horrible life, Ma’. I was like, ‘My life was never horrible. It was just different.’ So that made him want to do a song about it.”

However, the song almost didn’t make the cut, as Carter wasn’t happy with it at first. Jay-Z spit lyrics that were so direct and to the point, that Carter became hesitant about the release and subsequent exposure of her personal business.

“I was sharing myself with (Jay-Z), not to share myself with the world. I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” she recalled. However, things took a turn when Carter revisited the words that she’d written for Jay-Z. Her words turned into poetry and eventually became the poetic break on “Smile,” that Jay-Z allowed her to speak for herself on the track.

“I was never ashamed of me,” she said. “I’m tired of all the mystery. I’m gonna give it to them. I don’t have to worry about anybody wondering if I’m in the life or not. I’m gonna tell them. So now that I told you what do you have to talk about? So now maybe you can focus on the phenomenal things I do.”