Jayflows✨❤️

On the night of May 5, 2014, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and Solange Knowles attended the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala (Met Gala) in New York. The theme that year was “Charles James: Beyond Fashion.” Beyoncé and Jay-Z arrived together and were photographed looking affectionate on the red carpet. Solange arrived separately, wearing a dress by designer Phillip Lim. After the main event, the trio went to an afterparty at the Boom Boom Room inside the Standard Hotel. Eyewitnesses later said Beyoncé and Solange were on the dance floor (including with Naomi Campbell at points), while Jay-Z stayed more low-key near a fireplace area. At some point, the group decided to leave. They entered an elevator with a bodyguard (later identified in reports as Julius). What happened next was captured on the hotel’s security cameras. The footage, which had no audio, showed Solange confronting Jay-Z. She pointed at him, then began physically attacking him, throwing punches and kicks. The bodyguard hit the emergency stop button (around the 12th floor according to some accounts) and tried to restrain her. Solange still managed to land blows. Jay-Z mostly blocked and backed away without striking back; at one point he grabbed her foot after she kicked. Beyoncé stood nearby for much of it, largely still and staring ahead, though she eventually moved between them at one moment. The full clip ran roughly 3–3.5 minutes. They exited the elevator and the hotel. Photos taken outside showed Jay-Z with a hand near his face, Beyoncé attempting a composed smile, and Solange looking visibly upset. Beyoncé and Solange left in one car; Jay-Z left separately in another. The Standard Hotel later fired an employee after investigating the leak of the footage. About a week later (around May 12), TMZ published the surveillance video. It immediately dominated the internet. On May 15, the family released a joint statement through the Associated Press: they had worked through the matter, Jay-Z and Solange each took responsibility for their roles in the private incident that had played out publicly, they had apologized to each other, and they were moving forward as a united family. They did not explain what caused the fight. In August 2014, Beyoncé addressed it indirectly on the remix of “Flawless,” rapping lines that referenced escalating “like elevators” and saying “of course sometimes shit goes down when there’s a billion dollars on an elevator.” Speculation about the trigger never fully died. Rachel Roy (a designer who had previously been married to Jay-Z’s former associate Damon Dash) was at the event and had long been the subject of rumors linking her to Jay-Z. Some early anonymous sources claimed Solange had been provoked by an interaction involving Roy or something Jay-Z said that night. Years later (in a 2025 Daily Mail interview reported by Fox News and others), designer Oscar G. Lopez—who created the gown Roy wore that night—claimed the spark was Jay-Z complimenting Roy’s dress in front of Solange, which she allegedly found inappropriate. These remain claims from one person; the family has never confirmed the exact cause. Two years later, in April 2016, Beyoncé released Lemonade. The visual album was widely read as addressing betrayal and infidelity in a marriage. The track “Sorry” contained the line about “Becky with the good hair,” which many interpreted as a reference to the other woman. Combined with the earlier elevator footage, this fueled years of discussion connecting the 2014 incident to marital issues. Jay-Z later addressed related themes on his 2017 album 4:44. On “Kill Jay Z,” he rapped about nearly losing “the baddest girl in the world,” referenced “you egged Solange on,” and acknowledged knowing he was wrong. Other tracks touched on womanizing and family.