Did JAY-Z Name ‘4:44′ After the Hotel Where the Solange Elevator Incident Occurred?
If you watched the footnotes video for JAY-Z’s song “4:44,” you heard the rapper say he named the song and album that because he woke up at that time to write it. “I woke up, literally, at 4:44 in the morning, 4:44 a.m., to write this song,” he said.
While that may be true -- even though Jay says he doesn’t write his lyrics down -- there may be something else that inspired the song and album title. According to a tweet from Stephen Ossola, the address for The Standard hotel, where the infamous Solange and JAY-Z fight occurred, begins with 444.
A quick google search reveals the address which is 444 West 13th Street is the address for The Standard’s Le Bain, the club that sits atop the New York City hotel. Whether the address and album title are just a coincidence, you can’t put it past Hov to have multiple meanings for his lyrics and titles.
In an iHeartRadio interview, Jay called the song “powerful” and said it was one of the best songs he's ever wrote.
“So it became the title of the album and everything. It’s the title track because it’s such a powerful song, and I just believe one of the best songs I’ve ever written.”