Six years have passed since Beyoncé sent the Beyhive into overdrive as they attempted to identify “Becky with the good hair.” The popular lyric came from her song “Sorry,” which was featured on the singer’s “Lemonade” album and revealed to fans that Jay-Z stepped out on his wife.
Now, one of the women whom many fans believed to be the inspiration behind the line has broken her silence on the damning rumors. U.K. songstress Rita Ora became a target of suspicion when her connection to Jay-Z was overanalyzed — Ora signed with Roc Nation in 2008, though her relationship with the full service entertainment company soured years later— and she was spotted wearing what many believed to be a necklace with a J on it around the time “Sorry” and rumors of cheating began to heat up.
Who Is “Becky With The Good Hair”?
In an interview for the “Louis Theroux Interviews…” podcast, Ora made an effort to finally clear her name. She explained, “Oh my God, it literally was a coincidence, I didn’t even think about it, I swear. And it wasn’t a J, it was an R. They flipped it ’round and then it looked like a J.”
As for the photos of her wearing a lemon-applique bra, the “For You” vocalist said it had nothing to do with an alleged attempt to fuel fan speculation about her being Becky. “No, that was my own design with an underwear company called Tezenis that I was working with,” she said.
Ora continued, “This is what I mean, man. A pinch of salt. You’ve got to take things with a pinch of salt. And that’s what’s insane, I had to just sit through that until a good friend of mine, Katy Perry, gave me a hilarious badge that said ‘not Becky’.”
Beyoncé’s fans also suspected designer Rachel Roy may have inspired the line. She is the ex-wife of Jay’s former business partner Dame Dash. Roy was also coincidentally present at a 2014 Met Gala after party where the Grammy Award-winning rapper was slapped by his sister-in-law, Solange, while inside an elevator with Beyoncé.
Roy exacerbated matters by posting and then deleting the following caption on Instagram: “Good hair don’t care, but we will take good lighting, for selfies, or self truths, always. live in the light #nodramaqueens.”
“Sorry” songwriter Diana Gordon later told Entertainment Weekly that the line was a metaphor for what someone would call a sidekick and not actually intended to single out anyone specific.
In 2018, the billionaire mogul confirmed that he cheated on his longtime love but also noted that they were able to move past his indiscretions with the help of therapy. “You can be in love with someone, you can love someone, and if you haven’t experienced love and you don’t understand it and you don’t have the tools to move forward, you’re going to have complications, period… We chose to fight for our love, for our family, to give our kids a different outcome, to break that cycle,” he told CNN’s Van Jones.
He also addressed the rough patch on his album, “4:44,” where he rapped: “I apologize because at your best you are love/ And because I fall short of what I say I’m all about/ And if my children knew, I don’t know what I would do/ Yo did what with who?/ What good is a ménage á trois when you have a soulmate/ You risked that for Blue?”
