Emma Gunavardhana has a couple crush: the powerful duo that is Mr and Mrs Carter, AKA Beyonce and Jay-Z
The Mrs Carter Show made another stop on its world tour in London last week and it has to be said the capital was buzzing with Beyonce’s presence. There was her shopping spree at Topshop, a night out with Jay-Z at The Arts Club and her date-night dinner at Cecconi’s. What with her visual album, her eye-popping tour and the fact she’s practically been on our doorstep, Glossip Girl isn’t alone in having caught Beyonce fever.
The key moment, and the thing that actually tipped GG over the edge, was seeing her show at the O2. Yes her stage outfits were amazing, her dance routines high-octane and her vocals off-the-scale, but it was a cameo appearance from Jay-Z during Drunk in Love that made us scream ourselves hoarse. Why? Because on stage in front of all those people it was so obvious they are SO in love. We’re talking The Notebook level love here.
It made us look back at music’s power couple and delve a little deeper into their love story, because for years they kept their romance a secret and details of how they dated have only come out in snippets here and there during interviews long after the fact. Did you know, for example, that they actually started dating in 2000, when B was only 19 and Jay-Z was 30, only going on their first date after 18 months of phone, email and text conversations? Or that even when Beyonce guested on Jay-Z’s track 03 Bonnie and Clyde, their romance was still a closely guarded secret?
Even then, in her early twenties, she was in no rush to get married, telling Oprah Winfrey that marriage wasn’t on her agenda until she was in her late twenties: “I really don’t believe that you will love the same thing when you’re 20 as you do at 30. So that was my rule – before the age of 25 I would never get married.”
They are a power couple with a power love that seems to have quietly erased any romantic past from either’s history. Jay-Z may have had romances with actress Rosario Dawson and R&B starlet Aaliyah, and Beyonce’s ex Lyndall Locke may have spilled the beans on their relationship to the press, but none of that really matters when you see Jay-Z and Beyonce together.Even pictures of them under the stage at Beyonce’s show last week, or backstage at the Brits back in February reveal candid glimpses of something extra special.
Public displays of affection notwithstanding, they also say the cutest things about each other. Jay-Z is fairly tight-lipped most of the time, but revealed to Vanity Fair magazine how being a successful rapper didn’t really count when it came to pursuing his dream girl: “She’s a charming Southern girl, you know, she’s not impressed… But I would have definitely had to be this cool.” Equally Beyonce muses: “I would not be the woman I am if I didn’t go home to that man.”
So basically forget Antony and Cleopatra and The Notebook’s Noah and Allie; what Beyonce and Jay-Z have is a modern, gangsta fairytale.