Jay Z Will Reportedly Respond To 'Lemonade'

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life gives you Lemonade, if you're Jay Z, you make your own album. According to US Weekly, the rapper is considering recording a Jay Z album response to Lemonade . Bustle has reached out to Jay Z's representatives, but have yet to receive a response. Beyoncé's hotly discussed HBO video special/album Lemonade, which centers on a woman who has been cheated on by her husband, has been breaking chart records since its release. She's become the first woman to have "12 songs in the rundown simultaneously," according to the Guardian.

While Beyoncé never explicitly stated that the album was supposed to be about Jay Z and her, public incidents like Beyoncé's sister Solange Knowles attacking Jay Z in an elevator have fueled speculation that the album is meant as an autobiographical take on Jay Z's infidelity. Bustle has reached out to Beyoncé and Jay Z regarding the divorce and cheating allegations, but has yet to hear back.

If the album really is an autobiography, it wouldn't be surprising if Jay Z wanted to contribute his own take on his and Beyoncé's marriage. According to an alleged source close to the pair, “Jay is working on an album telling his side of things." The same unnamed source says that we shouldn't get too worried about the state of Beyoncé and Jay's relationship following the release of Lemonade. Apparently, the power couple are "better than ever."

There's a lot of ifs in this story. For one thing, it seems worth stating that Beyoncé's unauthorized biographer does not believe that Lemonade is all about Beyonce's own life. In a Cosmopolitan interview with J. Randy Taraborrelli, Taraborrelli focused on Beyoncé's father's history of infidelity and commented that:

I do know from my studying of Beyoncé [that] her personality is such that if in fact she was actually having marital problems, she would not be sitting down writing songs about it for the nation to dissect and interpret. That's not who she is. She's too private a person to handle her marital dysfunction for the world to see and examine. More likely what she's doing is she's possibly writing about her mother's marriage and what she witnessed there. That sounds like Beyoncé. Or she's taking the general consensus [of what] the nation feels about her marriage to Jay Z, and she's capitalizing on it and giving the public what they want, which is the intrigue about that relationship.

There was also a source cited in an article from April 26 on E! News, who stated that Jay was more involved than most people realize in the creation of Lemonade:

Jay was involved in the creation of 'Lemonade' and knew every song Bey was going to release. He knew the lyrics; he knew the implications. He had to approve the songs before release. Jay is a very smart businessman ... Bottom line is that they are both really smart and they both saw dollar signs.

Despite this alleged creative involvement, it seems highly probable Jay Z will release an album which will be marketed as a response to Lemonade. He's a smart businessman and not capitalizing on the buzz surrounding Lemonade would be a missed opportunity. But an album that's intended as a genuine response to Lemonade? Since the couple live together, I imagine all meaningful communication takes place the same way it does for any couple: face to face, not album to album.