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As systematic and white-people-serving gentrification continues its attempts to erase Brooklyn’s deeply rich black and brown history, “Marcy Me” serves as JAY-Z’s reminder that, 20 years later, he’s still from Marcy, son, and there still ain’t nothing nice here. “Live from Bedford-Stuyvesant, the livest one/ Representing BK to the fullest” is a Biggie line that can almost surely be engraved on the tombstone of any true Kings County lifer - and now JAY-Z has further immortalized it on the intro to this three-minute lyrical miracle from 4:44.
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Backed by Wonder’s harmonies, she recites, “Love who you love/ Because life isn't guaranteed/ Smile.” Gloria’s moment in the sun and out of the shadows feels not just honest, but a key to understanding how a family heals and grows overtime. More notably, he reveals that his mother recently came out as lesbian, a fact that she later confirms herself in a moving poem. "Love by itself is hollow." The same thinking - that love itself needs the attention, devotion, and reassessment that living things require - is evident all over 4:44, but gets a special viewpoint on “Smile.” Over a beat that chops up Wonder’s classic anthem, JAY-Z raps about the power of good memories and triumphing over his adversaries. "For love to be effective it has to be fed," he said of the song’s inspiration during an interview in 2015. On a grey winter’s day in New York, Stevie Wonder wrote the iconic “Love’s In Need Of Love Today,” moved by the presence of his pregnant wife and some heady thoughts about love.