Foreward.
This post introduces an ebook I'm releasing in installments to deconstruct JAY-Z's 13th solo album, 4:44, track by track.
I should mention now, my analyses might be a bit of an overkill for some. And that's okay. Hopefully, this post works as a primer.
The goals:
(1) to speak about Hip Hop in a manner similar to the way, say, Michael Robbins, author of Equipment for Living: On Poetry and Pop Music (Simon & Schuster), uses ‘Advanced Pop’ to speak about and intellectualize Bruce Springsteen or Miley Cyrus
(2) to gravitate away from the traditional Hip Hop critique that focuses more on the commercial aspects of an EP and, instead, go deeper into hyperbole about symbolism and literary allusions, almost to the point of fan-fiction
(3) to make an art appreciator out of you (if you aren't already).
Any who...
What’s in a Name? Dissecting the Album Title.
What a cryptic title — 4:44.
While reading JAY-Z’s explanations one morning over tea, I thought to myself: he’s hiding something (or alluding to something, rather).
“‘4:44’ is a song that I wrote, and it’s the crux of the album, just right in the middle of the album. And I woke up, literally, at 4:44 in the morning, 4:44 AM, to write this song. So it became the title of the album and everything. It’s the title track because it’s such a powerful song, and I just believe one of the best songs I’ve ever written.” — JAY-Z
The iconic songwriter kept it aloof with iHeartRadio in their exclusive interview, explaining 4:44 as the mark of an awakening to a new level of genius by way of writing, arguably, one of the best songs he’s ever written. (And yes, I would agree, 4:44 might just be one of the best songs ever written for reasons I’ll get into later.)
Okay, cool story, but you as well as I know there’s got to be more to it than that.
The expression, pattern, whatever…synchronicity (that’s it!) must’ve meant something to him already, must’ve pointed to something inside of him that carries some greater significance for his awakening to muse artwork.
Then I remembered that JAY-Z and Beyonce, both, have an obsession with the number 4:
- the Roc-a-fella hand symbol has 4 vertices
- both JAY-Z and Beyoncé were born on the 4th
- Beyoncé’s mom was born on the 4th
- Jay-Z owns a club franchise called 40/40
- they married on 4/4/2008
- named their first child — Blue Ivy — after the roman numeral IV
- they both have the roman numeral IV tattooed on their ring fingers
Highsnobiety and Complex outline the couple’s fixation with the number 4 in greater detail but I think it’s safe to say the number 4 definitely means something to both JAY-Z and Beyoncé.
Then this happened:
I'm at The Standard where Solange beat Jay-Z's ass in the elevator. THE ADDRESS IS 444. I AM SHOOK pic.twitter.com/ZKtAVxMQiS
— stephen () July 26, 2017
That tweet garnered a lot of buzz but then again, so did the Standard fight. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it.
Here’s the footage:
Source: TMZ
In 2014, a CCTV recording captured a confrontation between Beyoncé’s sister, Afro-soul goddess Solange Knowles, and JAY-Z in an elevator at the Standard. During the exchange, Beyoncé stood by idly, watching silently.
TMZ leaked the footage and almost immediately after, the #BeyHive swarmed with speculation and conspiracy.
Later, rumors surfaced about infidelity and Beyoncé confirmed the rumors with a platinum-selling statement— the visual album, Lemonade (2016). Lemonade spilled the juice about Beyoncé’s main squeeze and the bittersweet experience of being in love with a cheater.
Lemonade Album Cover. Source: Wikipedia.
Ultimately, the album served a cathartic purpose. Lemonade opened up a wide-spread conversation with her fanbase about infidelity, yes, but also put the spotlight on larger civic issues and contemporary suffrage movements. Lemonade showed fans how to deal and heal — through art. To speak to her level of artistry, the visual album won a Peabody and had a good run as the best-selling album for the majority of last year.
So, I’m not doubting that 4:44 somehow works in tandem with Lemonade. In fact, taking it to the moon and stars with a Venus versus Mars type of inter-album (inter-galactic) discourse makes perfect sense at this point in their marriage and partnership.
I always call Bey our de facto A&R. Pillow talk is the strongest conversation on the planet. Every song has to get past her ears, in my eyes. She came by a lot and played a good part in helping us get over hurdles on certain records. Of course, she’s genius-level with that. — No I.D.
No I.D., who scored the album (almost in its entirety, with spurts of sampling requests from JAY), effectively categorized the notion of 4:44 being solely a response to Lemonade as moot to the New York Times:
No, we never directly spoke about that album. Mainly because if he talks about himself, it’s going to bleed into that regardless. But there’s a difference in talking about it for the sake of response and for the sake of honesty and the truth. The truth needs to explain why you are the way you are, why you did what you did. We know what happened. We got it. But what were the circumstances that led to this and how do you feel about it? — No I.D.
Fair enough. But what about that title — which, more or less, serves as the album artwork. Surely, the title has to be a symbol pointing to something more. The repetition of the number 4 just sounds like a triple entendre…
I decided to take a break from coding one night to give the album a thorough listen. ‘What does 4:44 mean?’ started permeating my thoughts, and throwing off my concentration. Tidal made ties with Sprint, so I had a free 6-month subscription and new wind to listen to more music.
As the album started to play, I jotted down prompts that could help reverse engineer the title:
Was 4:44 a sequence? Well, technically, yeah.
- three 4s following each other (a sequence of 4s)
- a sequence of tracks, with re-pitched samples (a sequence of sequences)
But also:
- 13th solo album
- 13th album to go at least platinum
- has 13 tracks (including the bonuses)
Using numerology, 13 reduces down to 4.
4–4–4 might be some sort of reductive explanation or expression that commemorates the 13–13–13 milestone. Hmm, but then that colon…
What about a ratio?_ Probably._
JAY-Z released Magna Carta, Holy Grail — his 12th solo album — roughly 4 years ago, when he was 44. Back in 2013, after his 44th birthday, Jay-Z posted on his blog Life and Times about a 22-day challenge to go completely vegan and the spirituality behind turning 44.
He also spoke on the numerology behind 22 (the number of days psychologists reason it takes to break a habit) and subsequently 4, as he used numerology to reduce 22 down to 4 in his post.
Maybe 4:44 notates the time delta from his last album release or his last spiritual awakening (as a derivative of his age).
Maybe. That would be interesting, if each of JAY-Z’s albums represented some sort of spiritual awakening in his life.
Could it be a field extension?Perhaps.
I don’t know too much about field extensions, but I recognize the notation — expressing a subset of some field. It looks like this:
F:M
A very surface level explanation from my limited understanding (just so we can be on the same page, here): the first variable (F) represents the master field or set of numbers and the variable after the colon (M) represents some smaller portion or subset of F. There’s more to it, of course, (e.g., vectors and dimension, scalers, etc.) but I bring it up to say this:
Maybe 4:44 has something to do with his children: Blue Ivy and her new twin siblings, Rumi and Sir.
That would make some sense (right?)… 4:44 symbolizing the Carter-Knowles children, where the twins are a subsequent or derivative set — a dyad of elements — in relation to Blue, the first child (the first set of elements).
Fields are vector shapes, so they form planes or flat surface, sometimes called faces — 3 faces — of a…
Cube.
I sketched out a cube.
When you tilt a cube, notated {4, 3}, or gain perspective on the cube, any given one of those vertices connects to 3 visible faces.
The 2 vertices popping out at us on a tilted cube kind of function like connectors for the three faces.
3 Faces of a Tilted Cube. Source: Wikipedia.
And since a cube has three-dimensions, it also has something called a vertex figure (and the cube’s vortex figure is notated 4.4.4).
A Cube’s Vertex Figure. The shorthand for this figure is 4.4.4. Source: Wikipedia.
Maybe 4:44 symbolizes the new Carter-Knowles family structure? Two vertices (JAY-Z and Beyonce) connecting three faces (Blue Ivy, Sir, and Rumi)?
I sat with that thought for a second. I guess, then, the tilted cube functions almost like a family picture. A family portrait. Portrait…
Wait, could 4:44 be referencing Cubism?
JAY-Z made it quite clear on his last album that he considers himself the Pablo Picasso of Hip Hop. The tracks oozed of opulence and allusions to fine (and very expensive) art. JAY-Z even likened his home to famous museums, like the Louvre and the MoMA.
Forbes calculated a total of $439 million in art references on Magna Carta, Holy Grail and JAY-Z released an exclusive HBO documentary/performance art video for ‘Picasso Baby’ at the Pace Gallery. Yes, I think we can deduce that he likes art (most likely, Expressionist and Cubist art).
JAY-Z performing Picasso Baby, includes Marina Abramovic, at the Pace Gallery.
Source: MITVBG
Maybe 4:44 continues to make references to art. Looking at the titles on the album tracklist, however, didn’t bring any famous pieces or artists to mind.
I took in the sketches and notes while the tracks continued to play. Yes, 4:44 did feel like a reference to a cube, and the family structure, and the Standard, and all of the above.
Still, something felt hidden down below, underneath the surface.
It was getting late.
What began as a logical progression started feeling like an infinite loop...
Healing Circles : Religious Symbolism and the Cube.
Right when I motioned to close my sketch pad, though, JAY-Z shouted:
“Shawn was on that Gospel shit / I was on the total fuckin’ opposite”
Damn.
Ah, yes. I forgot.
If you’re familiar with JAY-Z, then you’re also familiar with his alter ego, HOV (yes, kind ok like HOVA or Jehovah).
With every album, HOV always makes it a point to sneak in some opinions about religion on a track or 4. Not surprising for a Sagittarian. As someone who identifies as a Christian, to me, the title also looks like a Bible verse.
I googled ‘4:44 AND Bible’ with the intent of sourcing a bunch of significant scripture. Instead, this one repeated in the results:
For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country. — John 4:44 KJV
I remember watching a sermon a few weeks prior on Facebook, where the Pastor monologued about alienation and displacement. (I think, in reference to this very verse.) The sermon used Jesus as the main anecdote and discussed how those closest to him — his hometown — ended up ‘missing the miracle’.
I did some more googling and found that religious historians and scholars have interpreted John 4:44 to literally mean that Jesus bypassed Nazareth on his way to Galilee. Explicating further, though, yes, this also speaks to a weird separation between Jesus of Nazareth and his hometown.
Huh.
Maybe JAY-Z’s been alienated from his home/those closest to him in some way and hasn’t had the chance to express the emotions packaged up in this album? The video footnotes for the 4:44 (the track, on Tidal) discusses this idea at length.
I thought about the cube again.
Is there some secret religious symbol hidden in the cube?
Again, I googled and came across one of the cube’s net figures. It looks like this:
One of the Nets of a Cube. Source: Wikipedia.
A cross.
For whatever reason, the metamorphosis of the net brought another structure — a more specific cube — to mind.
Metatron’s Cube. It looks like this:
Metatron’s Cube, emphasizing the tilted cube
Metatron’s Cube forms a cube but it also forms 13 spheres. Artists, Spiritualists, and Healers often reference this shape when discussing things like Creationism, the Chromatic Scale in music, chakras, healing energy through the galactic center, and all sorts of stuff that I won’t go into here (for the sake of brevity).
Interesting, though.
If HOV really is referencing Metatron’s cube, he wouldn’t be the first famous artist to do so. Leonardo da Vinci, the great grand-daddy of Cubism, also took a great interest in this shape, but in a different form, called the stellated octahedron.
“Stellated Octahedron” from “De Divina Proportione”. 1509. Leonardo da Vinci. Illustration.
I squinted at the illustration.
Huh.
The color scheme even looks sort of similar to 4:44’s album cover/color scheme. Elevatas (at the top of da Vinci’s drawing) — a latin conjugation for the verb ēlevō, meaning to raise/elevate but also to alleviate or lessen —would encompass everything from the Standard elevator fight to the lonely nights in Rome, tellin’ Bey to phone home, to the Roc.
So maybe, in the same way Magna Carta, Holy Grails’ album artwork derived from Italian sculptor Battista di Domenico Lorenzi’s “Alpheus and Arethusa”:
Have you heard @S_C_’s new album? His album cover features the “Alpheus and Arethusa” sculpture from our collection: pic.twitter.com/zAnG174X2W
— The Met () July 10, 2013
(The Met promoting ‘Magna Carta, Holy Grail’ in 2013)
4:44's album artwork…
4:44 Album Artwork
…might also derive from famous art, in this case — da Vinci’s “Stellated Octahedron” illustration. Taking one more look, the stellated octahedron also resembles a compass rose:
Source: Pintrest.
…or, better, the Vitruvian Man, where da Vinci basically forms a compass rose with his body:
Vitruvian Man. Leonardo da Vinci. appx. 1940. Drawing.
That’s when a real hypothesis started to form. Inconspicuous Branding… Tom Ford...(never mind.)
What if the 4:44 symbolizes not only the compass rose but just a straight up compass (for drawing and squaring a circle)?
That would make sense — JAY-Z talking about/to his inner circle, his family, his fanbase; teaching listeners, (black) men in particular, how to navigate the apology (or maybe the Greek apologia) to compliment the sentiments of Lemonade but in a polar opposite way.
That’s what I’m going with.
More so, what if the sequence has to do with art history — a sequence of movements or events, denoted by periods in time?
The Hidden Artwork in 4:44 — Romanticism to Post-modernism
Separation. Edvard Munch. 1896. Oil and Canvas (Public Domain)
In the days that followed, I listened to the album over and over again in the background of my daily routine until the scores, the shapes, the numbers, the ratios the drama, the verses began to blur.
I started to see things and hear things in the music: classic fine art from different movements, Shakespearean plays, and it occurred to me — this album is literally a work of art.
What does 4:44 mean?
Displacement (if I had to give my best guess). I could be entirely incorrect on that, though.
What’s more important: the journey. The title pushed me to think. In the process of curating the art references for more writing, I started to wonder — given the low Millennial turnout to Museums these days — just how many of JAY-Z’s fans actually catch on to these references and allusions.
What happens when the artist evolves before the audience?
I’m hoping to make connections (for those of you that have an interest in this sort of thing) through a conversation about fine art, the philosophies behind the artwork, and the album in a forthcoming project.
NOTE: these analyses are mostly speculative and derive from research and a long-time love for art across mediums. By no means should the following be taken as an official decoding and this post has no affiliation to the artist or any other entities.
Behind the Scenes of 4:44 — the eBook
I’m releasing an ebook to unpack the tracks on 4:44 and showcase the hidden artwork behind the lyrics. If you’re interested in more analyses, then I welcome you to subscribe to the series below: