Can We Trust Jay Z: The Responsibility of Black Men in Healing the Family
Beyonce’s visual album Lemonade contains many powerful images, from her smashing car windows with a bat to a mansion being consumed by flames. Images are sometimes able to express emotions in a way that words can’t. I believe that this is even more true for images that contain another human being as its focal point. You can identify with the person in front of the camera because like you they are human too. There is a connection, you can close your eyes and place yourself in their body. The connection and ability to imagine yourself as the subject of an image are even stronger if the viewer is from the same demographic as you. I feel a deep connection to Jay-Z in the picture above.
Do you feel a connection to Jay-Z? How do you feel when you look at him? What do you see?
In an article titled Moving Beyond Pain, bell hooks describe how she thought about the images of Jay-Z.
bell hooks wrote, “No matter how hard women in relationships with patriarchal men work for change, forgive, and reconcile, men must do the work of inner and outer transformation if emotional violence against black females is to end. We see no hint of this in Lemonade. If change is not mutual then black female emotional hurt can be voiced, but the reality of men inflicting emotional pain will still continue (can we really trust the caring images of Jay Z which conclude this narrative).”
When looking at this image of Jay-Z, I see a husband and father that is not shying away from taking responsibility for the wrong he has done. And at the same time, I see him struggling to not only accept the forgiveness of his wife, the mother of his children, and the person he wronged but also himself. I feel his pain and vulnerability. I trust that he knows what he has done is wrong and that he is committed to making things right.
I understand the distrust and apprehensiveness of bell hooks. And I completely agree that to end the emotional violence that women experience in relationships and bring an end to patriarchy, men must do the emotional and psychological labor needed to identify why we treat women in a negative way and learn better ways of thinking and behaving. Through an exploration of Jay-Z’s album 4:44, Kendrick Lamar’s album Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, interviews, and articles analyzing it, I will show that men like Jay-Z and Kendrick who have done and are committed to continuing to do the emotional and psychological labor can be trusted.
Jay-Z’s album 4:44 came out a year after Lemonade and due to the framing of many news outlets, many people saw it as a “response” to Lemonade. This framing gave the connotation as though these were diss tracks instead of two individual artists processing a painful experience in their own way. A lesser-known fact that was shared by Jay Z in an interview with The New York Times’ executive director, Dean Baquet, was that he and Beyonce were working on their albums together and that Lemonade came out first because her music was further along.
In this interview, he talked about going to therapy and how that helped him see how the things he experienced growing up connected to his lack of emotional maturity and the dehumanization of women. The reason bell hooks reference the inner and outer work is that the manifestation of not doing the work can look like cheating, but the reason for the cheating is much deeper than just having a physical attraction to another person. He describes that one of the deeper issues he had to focus on is his feelings and perception of himself. The song on the 4:44 album that encapsulates that process and comes to those conclusions is the song named after the title of the album, 4:44. Like Beyonce, Jay Z released video content that paired with the album, he released music videos and a mini-documentary called “Footnotes” that featured candid conversations with other notable men about the topics mentioned on his album. Below are the song, music video, and mini-documentary Footnotes of 4:44.
4:44 is not similar to Beyonce’s Lemonade in that Lemonade gave an in-depth, step-by-step, immersion of her grief process and how she helped heal her marriage to Jay Z. In 4:44, Jay-Z briefly describes his regrets, revelations post-therapy and how he will be moving forward. But Kendrick’s album Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers (Mr. Morale) melds the two styles together. Listening to Kendrick’s Mr. Morale is like being a fly on the wall of his therapy session. He is as vulnerable about his emotions and beliefs as Beyonce and is as reflective and accountable as Jay-Z. There’s a reason why Kendrick was one of the three men that was featured on Lemonade. And when Jay-Z dropped 4:44 Kendrick’s tweet said, “4:44. WOW. MASTER TEACHER.”. So, Kendrick picks up where Jay-Z left off by bringing the focus back on what as black men we need to do to heal ourselves to better love black women.
I don’t have the time to do a deep dive into all his songs because each one deserves equal amounts of attention and analysis. But I will touch on two songs that are paramount to this essay, United in Grief and Father Time. United in Grief is a song that discusses how Kendrick is grieving and the whole black community is grieving which stops there from being a connection between black men and women. In this song, a repeated phrase is “we grieve different”. “We” reference both black people, but also specifically black men. Black men grieve and cope by seeking to obtain riches and sexual gratification. At the end of the day, we are running and running from trauma, just like Paul D in Beloved by Toni Morrison. In Beloved Paul D asks himself why he had sex with Beloved, he said, “Coupling with her wasn’t even fun. It was more like a brainless urge to stay alive.” He uses the analogy of being in water and drowning, having sex was like being able to rise to the surface and get a breath of air. But the act of sex isn’t enough, so he is plunged back into the deep dark sea. Kendrick comes to the same conclusion that money and sex don’t help. He ends the song with an acceptance that he can’t keep running, lying, and coping unhealthily, he must tell and confront the truth about his pain because only the truth will set you free.
The song Father Time begins with a woman telling Kendrick that he needs therapy and Kendrick responds that real n-words don’t need therapy. The song then turns into him sharing his experience with his father and all the lessons he learned about being a man. Kendrick recognizes both the strengths and weaknesses his father’s lessons gave him. A strength he gained included a strong work ethic and perseverance. A weakness was not being able to express and show emotions. Toward the end of the song, Kendrick raps, “It’s crucial, they can’t stop us if we see the mistakes / ’Til then, let’s give the women a break, grown men with daddy issues”. In the first line “we” reference black men, so that if black men can see the mistakes of our fathers “they”, any enforcer of white supremacy, can’t stop “us”, the black community, from being healthy and well. In the next line, he commands that till the day come when white supremacy ends let “us”, black men, give “women “, black women, a break. Then Kendrick admonishes “black men with daddy issues”. Saying someone has daddy issues is derogatory and dismissive and is often used by men to describe a woman. But Kendrick flips it on its head to get black men to look at themselves and recognize that they too have literal daddy issues, so they should just be putting that on women. Lastly, we, as black men, must ask ourselves what black women need a break from. As a son of a single black mother, I witnessed my mother take on a huge amount of responsibility, she wouldn’t have to if my dad had done the inner and outer work to not end up in prison. Also, at Elon University black women are carrying the entire black community on their backs, planning events, and organizing. At the same time, they are full times students with jobs and internships. It’s time as black men we give them a break.
At the end of Beloved, it concludes with the image of Paul D, a black man who amid his solitude has stopped running and confronted the truth about his pain. By doing so he can see a future that can be shared by him and Sethe. He loves Sethe. But Sethe is barely holding on to life. Paul D decides that he will not leave her side and will nurse her back to health. I trust he will give her a break, indefinitely.
