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Writer's pictureKris Avalon

Jay Z's Mom Gloria Carter Marries Partner Roxanne Wilshire




Jay Z's mom Gloria Carter has tied the knot with longtime girlfriend Roxanne Wilshire in Tribeca New York over the weekend.


According to TMZ, Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland, Tina Knowles-Lawson, Tyler Perry, and Robin Roberts were in attendance at the star-studded wedding in Tribeca and reception that sources said didn’t wrap up until around 1 a.m.





On the song Smile, Jay-Z opened up about his mother coming out to him. The track is off his 2017 album 4:44.


“Mama had four kids, but she’s a lesbian/Had to pretend so long that she’s a thespian/Had to hide in the closet, so she medicate/Society shame and the pain was too much to take,” he rapped. “Cried tears of joy when you fell in love/Don’t matter to me if it’s a him or her/I just wanna see you smile through all the hate/Marie Antoinette, baby, let ’em eat cake.”




“Imagine having to live your life as someone else and you think you’re protecting your kids,” he explained. “For her to sit in front of me and tell me ‘I think I love someone,’ I really cried…I cried because I was so happy for her that she was free.”


Jay said his mother came out while he was still working on 4:44 and their conversation led to him writing “Smile” the very next day. The track features a poem, written by Gloria, which she wrote on a plane headed to Los Angeles to see her son.


Gloria figured she needed to assist him in completing the song. After presenting him with the poem, Jay recorded her as she recited it over the phone. “I was sitting there and I was telling him one day. I just finally started telling him who I was. Besides your mother, this is the person that I am, you know? This is the life that I lived,” Gloria said in a 2017 appearance on the D’Usse Friday podcast. “So my son started actually, like, tearing because he was 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.”


In 2019 when he and wife Beyoncé received the Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards, Bey thanked her gay uncle Johnny who was also an influence on her creating the Renaissance album, and Jay thanked his mother for allowing him to share her story.


Her uncle Johnny is referenced on the song Heated, and he also put her on to house music.





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