Carter came out as a lesbian with a 2017 duet with her son, “Smile,” in which she speaks about her experience.
“The world is changing and they say it’s time to be free / But you live with the fear of just being me,” Carter says in the song, which appears on Jay-Z’s “4:44″ album.
“But life is short, and it’s time to be free / Love who you love, because life isn’t guaranteed.”
Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, raps in that song, “Mama had four kids, but she’s a lesbian / Had to pretend so long that she’s a thespian.”
The following year, the Brooklyn-born Jay-Z spoke about his mother coming out to him during an interview with David Letterman on Netflix’s “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.”
“This was the first time we had the conversation, and the first time I heard her say she loved her partner,” Jay-Z, 53, said at the time.
“Like, ‘I feel like I love somebody.’ She said, ‘I feel like.’ She held that little bit back, still,” the rapper continued. “She didn’t say, ‘I’m in love,’ she said, ‘I feel like I love someone.’ And I just, I cried. I don’t even believe in crying because you’re happy. I don’t even know what that is.”