Photo: Getty
Jay-Z and Beyoncé‘s daughter Blue Ivy Carter isn’t even 12 years old yet and is already a cultural icon (who else can say they were crowned the “most famous baby in the world” only a few days after their birth?). But could you imagine a world in which she wasn’t Blue Ivy, a world in which her “fans” weren’t cleverly named the Blue Ivy League? Seems impossible, but dad Jay-Z says Blue Ivy wasn’t actually his and Bey’s first choice for their eldest child’s name.
Since she was born in 2012, there have been rumors that the name Blue Ivy could have been inspired by Jay’s favorite color, or a reference to a passage by writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, or an homage to the couple’s favorite number (Blue has four letters, and Ivy could refer to 4’s roman numeral “IV”). But Jay-Z says the truth is much more simple. “She was meant to be Brooklyn,” Jay told Gayle King in a new interview with CBS Mornings.
“It was supposed to be Brooklyn, that was the name we had in theory. But when we got the sonograms, you know, [the baby] is super small, and we was calling her a blueberry,” Jay recalled. “Like, ‘Look at the little blueberry!’ It was like a nickname. For nine months we were like, ‘look at the little blueberry.’ So it was just natural, we just took the ‘berry’ off and called her Blue.” And thus, Blue Ivy was born — and this is only the beginning for the star-in-the-making.
Photo: Getty
If you were lucky enough to catch Beyoncé on her Renaissance tour this year, you probably saw Blue triumphantly performing alongside her mom during the song “My Power.” According to Jay, Blue worked extremely hard to make her dream of dancing onstage a reality.
Jay-Z called Blue’s journey towards the spotlight a process of “reclaiming her power” after being bullied online by racist media and trolls as a young child. “What makes me super proud and I still get goosebumps seeing her walk on stage… Blue’s been born into a life she didn’t ask for,” he explained. “Since she was born she’s been [under] scrutiny and the public eye and everyone having an opinion — even as a little girl, [for example, with] how she keeps her hair. So for her to be on that stage and reclaim her power… and the song is called ‘My Power,’ you can’t write a better script.”
According to Jay, Blue wanted to dance with her mom on the very first night of the Renaissance World Tour; she was nervous, but she was also ready. However, her parents wanted her to be sure, so they asked her to practice before performing in front of thousands and thousands of attendees.
“She’s 11, she’s nervous — I know how nervous she was, I know how frightened she was, but she wanted to do it,” he shared. “She wanted to do it the first night, we were like, ‘OK if this is something you want to do, you can’t just go out there. You gotta go work with the dancers.’”
Blue worked beyond hard to nail the moves, something that probably won’t surprise anyone who knows the work ethic of her mom. “She worked every day… she had a little icy pack on her back some days,” Jay said. Sounds like we’ll be seeing Brooklyn Blue Ivy grace even more stages in the near future, with or without Beyoncé by her side.
You can watch Part 2 of Jay-Z’s interview with King below:
Originally published in Teenvogue.com
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