The internet has been exploding for days with speculation about Jay Z’s supposed infidelity, but he’s not the only man Beyoncé alludes to in Lemonade. Many of the tracks reference Beyoncé’s father, Mathew Knowles, and most shockingly also hint at infidelity and abuse. It seems the men in Bey’s life need to step it up!
“Did he convince you he was a god? Did you get on your knees daily? Do his eyes close like doors? Are you a slave to the back of his hand? Am I talking about your husband or your father?” Beyoncé recites in the spoken word portion—written by poet Warsan Shire—before “Daddy Lessons.” That’s some pretty serious stuff there that definitely implies abuse, but Mathew Knowles is passionately arguing that the lyrics are not about him.
“I can say I have never in my life hit my daughter. So she has never been a slave to the back of my hand because I didn’t believe in that,” Knowles said in an interview with Sirius XM’s Mark Thompson. Thompson rebutted that the lyrics may imply someone was hitting Beyoncé’s mother, but Knowles stayed firm. “Well, there’s no way that we can get into the mind of Beyoncé. Only Beyoncé can answer who specifically she was talking to,” he said.
Knowles spent the rest of the interview praising his daughter for her creative work on Lemonade, reiterating how proud he is of Beyoncé and what she’s accomplished. So for now, there you have it folks.
And if you’re wondering whether or not he has some idea who the album is about and who “Becky with the good hair” is, it’s a mystery to him, too.