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Jay Z has spent his entire career working out his relationship with his dad.
Abandoned by his father, Adnis Reeves, at the age of 11, Hov internalized years of pain and sprinkled it into his lyrics. They reconciled in 2003, just months before Reeves died of liver failure. While short-lived, the restored relationship seems to have helped heal some of Jay’s emotional wounds, but the scars are still visible.
The trailer to Jay Z’s new album 4:44 features a song called “Adnis,” and based on the short snippet, he will be delving deeper into the aftermath of his strained paternal relationship—a topic that’s likely been weighing on his subconscious even more these days after the birth of a set of twins just this month. He raps: “Letter to my dad that I never wrote/Speeches I prepared that I never spoke/Words on a paper that I never read/Proses never penned/They stayed in my head.” When 4:44 drops, we may witness the deepest look into Jay’s psyche yet.
Ahead of the album's release this Friday, this is a history of the times in Jay Z’s discography that he's detailed his relationship with—and directly addressed—his father.
“Can't Knock The Hustle”
Lyric: “My Pops knew exactly what he did when he made me/Tried to get a nut and he got a nut, and what!”
Album: Reasonable Doubt (1996)
Intended to be Jay Z’s sole album, Reasonable Doubt doesn’t delve into the Brooklyn rapper’s private life (save for the closer “Regrets”). Instead he keeps his unshakeable cool throughout, even talking slick while imagining his own conception. This chuckler of a couplet is a guarded introduction to his relationship with his dad—a theme that grows deeper with his catalog.
“This Life Forever”
Lyric: “I just can't lose/When I was young I was like Fresh, Papa raised me to chess moves/And though you're gone, I'm not bitter, you left me prepared/We got divided by the years, but I got it from here”
Album: Black Gangster Original Soundtrack (1999)
Hov buries this nugget within a clever verse built on chess and mathematics puns. While vague, it’s one of the earliest instances of Jay opening up on wax about growing up without his Pops. He commented on the verse in Decoded: “My Pop taught me chess, but more than that, he taught me that life was like a giant chessboard where you had to be completely aware in the moment, but also thinking a few moves ahead. By the time he left, he’d already given me a lot of what I’d need to survive.”
“Hova Song (Outro)”
Lyric: “Retrospect, ain't been the same since I lost my dad/He's still alive, but still fuck you, don't cross my path”
Album: Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter (1999)
Jay finally reveals that his father was indeed absentee—his venom here is a precursor to the passionate open letter that follows on The Dynasty: Roc La Familia.
“Where Have You Been”
Lyric: “I would say ‘My daddy loves me and he'll never go away’/Bullshit, do you even remember December's my birthday?/Do you even remember the tender boy/You turned into a cold young man”
Album: The Dynasty: Roc La Familia (1999)
Up until this point, Jay had never been more emotional on a track. Fully unguarded, he pinpoints the many ways that he was scarred by his dad’s deadbeat status, and details how he was forced to step up and take his place. It’s one of the most affecting songs in Hov’s discography.
“Streets Is Talking”
Lyric: “I lost my Pops when I was 11, mmm, 12 years old/He's probably somewhere where the liquor is taking it's toll/But I ain't mad at you dad, holla at your lad!”
Album: The Dynasty: Roc La Familia
Jay leaves the door open for reconciliation here, also alluding to a drinking problem that’s more serious than the rapper lets on.
“Still Got Love For You”
Lyric: “Seemed sunny outside, always rained on Jay/Pop you my umbrella, come help your son with the weather/Soon we come together like man and man and build/Play Spades, cards face up, I've come to deal/In order to get right we gotta deal with this wrong/And the pain I felt all my life you feel in the song”
Album: Beanie Sigel’s The Reason (2001)
Perhaps feeling they’d been too harsh on “Where Have You Been,” Beanie Sigel and Jay dropped a more compassionate sequel one year later. On it, Hov extends an olive branch to his dad, rhyming about his yearning for a relationship with the man he’d idolized as a kid. But he wasn’t completely off the hook: “The one thing you taught me is to face my fears, coward.”
“Meet The Parents”
Lyric: “Six shots into his kin out of the gun/Niggas, be a father, you killin' your sons”
Album: The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse (2002)
While this heavy-handed allegory isn’t about Jay’s dad, Hov hints at the effect of growing up in a fatherless home on his own life with this closing refrain.
“If I Can't (Freestyle)”
Lyric: “My Pops got a liver disorder/My whole living's disordered/And I just got his living room ordered”
Album: The S. Carter Collection (2003)
Jay finally buried the hatchet with his father in 2003, borrowing a 50 Cent track to give fans life updates. He told Oprah that his dad died of liver disease just months after their reunion. “I got him an apartment, I was buying furniture,” he said. “And he passed away.”
“Moment Of Clarity”
Lyric: “So Pop, I forgive you for all the shit that I lived through/It wasn't all your fault, homie, you got caught/Into the same game I fought, that Uncle Ray lost”
Album: The Black Album (2003)
Hov paints a picture of his dad’s funeral: the numbness, and, more perhaps importantly, forgiveness that he felt while standing over his old man’s casket. But he also introduces a new storyline that connects to his late Uncle Ray...
"Pray"
Lyric: “As Mama taps her toes, as she rolls her J's/And my Papa just left the house/In search of the killer of my Uncle Ray/And she's trying to calm her nerves”
Album: American Gangster (2007)
Here we begin to learn the cause of the downward spiral that entrapped Jay’s father’s decades earlier: He’d become obsessed with avenging the death of his own baby brother, Jay Z’s uncle, Ray.
"New Day"
Lyric: “Promise to never leave him even if his mama tweakin’/Cause my dad left me and I promise never repeat him/Never repeat him, never repeat him”
Album: Watch The Throne (2011)
Even in absence, Jay Z’s father taught him a valuable lesson: the importance of active fatherhood. On this collaboration with Kanye West, he swears to his unborn son that he’ll always show up.
"Jay Z Blue"
Lyric: “Father never taught me how to be a father, treat a mother/I don't wanna have to just repeat another leave another/Baby with no daddy want no momma drama”
Album: Magna Carta... Holy Grail (2013)
Jay recognizes that some teachings are best absorbed through modeling—a reality that gives him anxiety as he contemplates his own role as a father and married man, and whether he’ll succumb to the same shortcomings as his dad.