Jay-Z is getting candid about his complicated relationship with his late father and the conversation that helped him let go of years of pain.
In episode 4 of his HBO Max docuseries “JAŸ-Z in 8,” the 56-year-old rapper opened up about reconnecting with his estranged father, Adnis “AJ” Reeves, about a month before his passing.
The topic came up as Jay-Z and Rick Rubin revisited “Where Have You Been,” his song with Beanie Sigel about the pain of growing up without a father, per Billboard.
Reeves left Jay-Z’s mother, Gloria Carter, and their children when the rapper was 11. Years later, Gloria pushed her son to finally sit down with his father and talk.
Their first attempt did not go as planned. Reeves never showed up, leaving Jay-Z “destroyed” and bringing years of hurt back to the surface.
“Like, I knew it. I told you. All those feelings come back. All to the surface,” he recalled. “Things I didn’t even know. Pain.”
Jay-Z Finally Got the Answers He Wanted From His Father
About a week later, Gloria asked Jay-Z to try again. He was hesitant after being let down the first time, but his mother insisted that he needed to do it.
This time, Reeves showed up.
Jay-Z said he wasted no time asking his father the questions he had been carrying with him since childhood.
“How could you do that? I’m your child. I’m just like you, I’m right down the block,” he recalled asking.
At first, Reeves became defensive and told his son that he could have come to see him. Jay-Z pushed back, reminding his father that he had been the child in the situation.
“I’m a child. That’s not my responsibility to see you,” he said.
But as they continued talking, Jay-Z said something shifted between them. His father began to hear what he was saying, and the two were finally able to have a real conversation.
“We just talked… We started really speaking,” he said.
For Jay-Z, getting everything off his chest brought a sense of relief he had not expected. He compared the feeling to chains dropping from his body.
“I just felt lighter,” he recalled.
Their Reunion Came Just in Time
After the conversation, Jay-Z began helping his father get back on his feet. He found Reeves an apartment and remembered his dad as a “cool dude” who was good at basketball, per Billboard.
Jay-Z soon learned that Reeves was seriously ill with liver damage. His father passed away at 53 in June 2003, about a month after they reconciled.
That helped Jay-Z understand why his mother had been so determined to get the two of them in the same room.
“Had I not spoken to him… I don’t know where I go,” Jay-Z said. “She knew he was sick. And she knew that had he passed without a conversation that I would never recover.”
Jay-Z has previously opened up about how his father leaving affected him long after childhood. In a 2005 Rolling Stone interview, he said the experience made him more guarded because he never wanted to become attached to something and have it taken away from him again.
His final conversation with Reeves gave him a chance to say what he had wanted to say for years. Jay-Z said it was not a dramatic confrontation filled with yelling and crying. Instead, they spoke honestly as two adults.
“I got to let it go. I got to tell him everything I wanted to say. I just said what I felt,” he recalled.
Looking back, Jay-Z believes that one conversation became a turning point for him, even if he did not yet know how to fully work through everything he had carried since childhood.
“That changed everything for me,” he said. “The beginning of changing everything. It opened me up, but I still didn’t have the tools to know how to.”
