Beyoncé and Jay Z, a relationship of 14 years and 1,000 million
The most powerful artist couple goes on tour and many criticize that the motivation is to make money. They claim that they saved their marriage thanks to music
Two years ago Beyoncé published Lemonade, an album in which the singer openly aired the infidelities of her husband, rapper Jay Z. She did it aggressively, flirting with rock and even speaking directly about her husband's lover her. She covered what is considered one of her best albums with a feminist air that culminated in the world tour of the same title. On stage, the Texan diva signed the most ambitious show of her career surrounded exclusively by women.
An army of independent women who exuded both strength and sensuality. A year later, the noted Jay Z wrote a new chapter of the soap opera with the release of 4:44, an album in which he apologized to her wife for having cheated on him with a very different result. The album was described as irrelevant and the success of the subsequent tour also did not come close to that of the artist's tour.
Now they hit the road together, although neither of them has a new job to promote. That is why this OTRII Tour has not been understood by many fans of the couple, and, even less, by the huge mass of Beyoncé followers, who believe that this step in her career is incoherent with respect to the previous one and that it only has a reason to be in making cash. Something that should not be necessary, since the couple's fortune is close to 1,100 million dollars (900 million euros) according to Forbes magazine. What is undeniable is that the most powerful couple in the music industry have used songs as a means of expressing their love problems, rarely speaking about her personal life in interviews. This show may be the final chapter of her latest marriage crisis and not just a project to continue making their relationship one of the most profitable.
The tour together is not something new for the couple. This OTRII is the continuation of the On the Run tour, which in 2014 left around 90 million at the box office. The second part foresees more bulky results for the marriage. It's billed as Beyoncé's Lemonade Tour, which grossed $ 200 million from 49 concerts. Now they will be 35 with her husband, and all in large stadiums so the benefit will be at that level. Jay Z made about 50 million with his last show for venues in the United States and Canada. Figures that do not indicate that the couple need to clean up their coffers, although it has long been rumored that the failure of Tidal, the streaming platform created by both and in which they are 50 percent partners, has caused them to lose many millions. The poor reception of Tidal symbolized their crisis in business, since it was the last project together just at the most critical moment of their relationship after Jay Z's infidelities.
A love story that began in 2004 publicly, when they appeared together on the red carpet at the MTV awards in Miami, but they have known each other since 1999 when Beyoncé was eighteen years old. They were married in 2008 in a top secret ceremony and in 2012 their first daughter, Blue Ivy, was born. After reconciling last year they showed a tattoo on their fingers with the number four, since they were both born on the 4th and married on the 4th of April (hence the title of his last album, 4:44). The icing on their new stage as a couple was the birth in July of their twins, Sir and Rumi.
Now they want to ratify their union on stage. Last November Jay Z spoke for the first time about his infidelity in The New York Times. He admitted to cheating on Beyoncé and explained that they both used music to get over it. "Our art was almost like a therapy session." A few days after their ten-year marriage, his next project has not gotten off to a good start. The promotional photo of the tour has caused anger and criticism in Africa for being a plagiarism of the poster of the Senegalese film Touki Bouki. The fans in the networks have done the rest.
These days a tweet went viral saying that the only reason for them to go on tour together is that Beyoncé does not trust leaving the rapper alone at home for four months. We will have to wait until June 6 in Cardiff (United Kingdom), the starting date of the tour, to see if OTRII is a great show of emotional catharsis of two superstars or, on the contrary, a forgettable financing instrument regarding their trajectories separately.
