Jay-Z has shared how he encouraged Amy Winehouse to stay with him and wife Beyonce after a chance meeting with her at a New York pub.
In an interview with Elliott Wilson and Brian “B.Dot” Miller of the Rap Radar podcast, the rapper and father-of-three detailed how he offered a place for Winehouse to stay amid her battle with her personal struggles with mental health and addiction.
“I was like, ‘You don’t even stutter. Why are you doing that?’” he recalled. “I looked at her, and I was like, ‘Stay with us.’
“The first time we hung out, I told her, ‘Stay with us.’”
The musician was talking about the topic of mental health on the back of the recent death of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, adding Winehouse’s own music was sending us the only messages we needed to listen to.
“She was telling us, she was writing the songs to our face, ‘They’re trying to make me go to rehab, I’m not going,’ like, what? “You have to go!”
Prior to her death in 2011, the Winehouse's life had been marred by eating disorders and self harm, before she eventually died of accidental alcohol poisoning.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2013, the singer’s brother Alex explained: “You knew just by looking at her… She would have died eventually, the way she was going, but what really killed her was the bulimia…
“I think that it left her weaker and more susceptible. Had she not had an eating disorder, she would have been physically stronger.”
For more on mental health:
Lack of sleep could be affecting your child’s mental health.
Madalyn’s explanation for her day off work has started an important conversation.
9 ‘resolutions’ you should make for your mental health this year.
