Kelly Rowland Reveals The Advice JAY-Z Gave Her Before Seeing Her Father

Kelly Rowland is opening up about reconnecting with her father after 3 decades.

Source: Arturo Holmes / Getty

On Tuesday, March 16, the singer was a guest host on Today, where she discussed the moment that she chose to reach out to her father after not speaking to him for 30 years. That’s when the Destiny’s Child alum revealed that it was actually JAY-Zwho gave her an important piece of advice before meeting her dad in 2018.

“He said, ‘Love is all about risk. You gotta decide if you’re gonna jump,’” she recalled. “‘You gonna jump?’ That’s what he asked me: ‘Are you gonna jump?’”

During the segment, Rowland explained why she hadn’t seen her father in so long, saying she was raised by her single mother after her father decided that he wasn’t ready for parenthood.

“I had a wonderful mom who supported me and loved me, but the truth is, there was always a piece of me that was kinda missing,” she admitted. “For 30 years, my dad was absent in my life.”

But a few years after the birth of her first son, Titan, and the death of her mother in 2014, she decided she was ready to meet her father.

“At that time, I think I still had these feeling of ‘Oh my god, I have no parents’ and it was like, ‘No, you do, you have one left,'” she said.

Rowland arranged to meet him in a hotel in Atlanta and gave him the space to talk freely for two hours, simply sitting there and listening to what he had to say. She says part of her path to forgiveness was learning and understanding that parents deserve grace, too.

“I learned that we are not perfect, and it broke my heart to know that there is going to be something about me that my kids is going to be disappointed about,” Kelly said, crying. “Something, you don’t do it intentionally of course. You have to allow space. You’re not going to get it right every time and that’s OK.”

Her father, Christopher Lovett, also joined her for part of the interview, saying their meeting was “like a dream.”

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