Beyonce and Jay-Z debut The Carters with new surprise joint album 'Everything Is Love'
Beyonce and Jay-Z surprised fans yet again by dropping a new joint album, "Everything Is Love," on Saturday. But there's one major, huge, monumental moment in these musicians' lives that no one is talking about -- the husband and wife duo just formed a super-group called, The Carters.
"Everything Is Love" is the first project from The Carters, with Beyonce and Jay-Z also credited individually. The nine-track project, which features songs like "BOSS," "NICE" and "713," explores themes like financial empowerment, building generational wealth and, of course, their own marriage.
Bey even makes light of Jay-Z's past infidelity in the album's closing song, "LOVEHAPPY," produced by David Andrew Sitek, where she sing-raps, "Yeah, you f----- up the first stone, we had to get remarried." Jay replies, laughing, "Yo, chill man."
It was released on Tidal, the music streaming service that Beyonce and Jay-Z own along with several other artists.
Although Jay-Z, Bey's husband of 10 years, has released other joint albums in the past -- such as his 2002 collaboration with R. Kelly, "The Best of Both Worlds," and the pair's 2004 follow-up, "Unfinished Business" -- it is a first for Beyonce, who has never released a joint album with anyone before.
But Beyonce has used other monikers in the past, choosing the simple "B" for her performance on DJ Khaled's collaboration "Top Off," which also featured Jay-Z and Future.
She and her husband have also aided each other in countless songs on their albums throughout the years, such as "Crazy in Love" and "That's How You Like It" from Beyonce's debut album in 2003. Other songs on which they have collaborated include "Deja Vu," "Drunk in Love," "Upgrade U," "Part II (On the Run)" and "Lift Off."
The creation of The Carters and the release of the group's first album, "Everything Is Love," confirms years' worth of rumors that the couple was working on a joint project.
Jay-Z even addressed the rumors in a lengthy New York Times interview, saying, "We were using our art almost like a therapy session. And we started making music together."
Jay noted that those recording sessions birthed Beyonce's 2016 "Lemonade" album and later Jay-Z's 2017 "4:44" album.
"The music she was making at that time was further along," he continued of why "Lemonade" dropped first. "So her album came out as opposed to the joint album that we were working on. We still have a lot of that music. And this is what it became."
The husband and wife duo, or should we call them new groupmates, are currently on tour -- their On The Run II tour. It kicks off in America on July 25 in Cleveland.