It’s Been 11 Years Since Solange Attacked Jay-Z in an Elevator at the Met Gala

What happens when there’s a billion dollars in an elevator? We may never have known if it weren’t for TMZ. On May 5, 2014, Beyoncé attended the Met Gala with her husband Jay-Z and sister Solange. At an after-party at the Standard Hotel, the three of them, plus a bodyguard, entered an elevator. CCTV footage captured Solange lunging at Jay-Z and attacking him while Beyoncé stood to the side and the bodyguard intervened. By the time the quartet made their way out of the lift, the paparazzi was there and everything seemed fine. Bey was her usual composed self.

Nobody would have known about the incident if one hotel employee hadn’t decided to cash in. According to a staffer at the Standard Hotel, the footage was recorded on a cell phone from the security monitors and then shopped around to the highest bidder. The New York Post claimed that TMZ put down $250,000 for it. The employee who did so was later fired, but by then this was a genie that couldn’t be put back in the bottle. Everyone had seen two of the most famous people alive, an unshakably solid power couple, and an indie music darling get primal and aggressive. Solange seemed ready to murder her brother-in-law, while her sister mostly stayed out of it. What happened?!

Of course, we sort of maybe but not really kind of know what happened. While Bey and Jay put on a united front afterward, the 2016 release of her album Lemonade further changed their brand as a megastar husband and wife team. Her raw and most musically sophisticated album delved into her private life in ways she had stridently avoided for so long, and it turns out that Jay had cheated. Lemonade is an excellent piece of work that documents Beyoncé’s emotional whirlwind as she goes from shock and anger to reconciliation. It was a genius move from both an artistic and celebrity perspective. She had total control over the narrative and made lemonade from those lemons.

But she also exposed something that hadn’t been discussed prior. Jay’s infidelities weren’t a frequent rumour at the time. Yet they were theorized as the reason for Solange beating the crap out of him in that elevator. It just made sense. Under what circumstances would you come out swinging against your sibling’s spouse? Cheating is typically at the top of the list. And it’s not like Beyoncé was trying to pull Solange away. Maybe, the Beyhive felt, she was happy to let her sister be her tag-team partner in this matter.

The elevator incident remains one of the few moments in Beyoncé’s long and storied public life where she didn’t seem to be 100% in control of everything. Since the release of her self-titled album, the one that turned her into an undisputed figure of power and artistic repute, she has all but excluded herself from the traditional narratives of fame. She doesn’t do interviews on talk shows or with magazines. She doesn’t get candid on social media or play silly games with TikTokers on the red carpet. She doesn’t even promote her albums if she doesn’t want to. This is a woman who commands such thrall that she can operate outside of the expected demands of her profession, and there aren’t many others who can even hope to replicate that.

Beyoncé’s image is one of opulence, of hard work but effortless allure. The grind is ceaseless, but so are the good times. It all happens on her terms or not at all. There is nothing relatable about Mrs. Knowles-Carter, and that’s by design. She is aspirational, yes, but not reachable. It’s certainly a change of pace from the current era of fame, where celebrities are striving to seem so normal and down to earth and just like us, which can inevitably slide into arrogance or resentment. But there’s only one Beyoncé, and that’s how everyone likes it.

A big part of her image is Jay-Z, one of the undeniable legends of rap and a mogul of exceeding wealth who has his fingers in a lot of pies. The pair has been together for a long time, and Jay has greatly benefitted from being Mr. Beyoncé. Think about just how many songs on the self-titled album are odes to how much she enjoys having sex with that man. They do big business deals together, collaborate on songs, pose for Tiffany’s, and model themselves as pure excellence. They’re a rare power couple in that they’re on even footing. He might be wealthier, but she’s the icon.

And he cheated. Yes, they’ve all moved on from it, creating pairing albums on the experience before joining forces for a Carters project, but it’s still the dent in their otherwise pristine armour. Would Beyoncé have made Lemonade had that video not been sold to TMZ? I go back and forth on this. It was certainly an excellent way to reclaim that story from the chattering masses, but I still know a lot of Beyhive members who think it should have ended with her leaving him. Lemonade showed vulnerability from her, and many wished she’d ended it more triumphantly. Every time I see rumours that Act III might be another Carters project, the responses are almost exclusively negative.

For Solange, who has often been positioned as the scrappier, more indie alternative to her sister, the incident just made people like her more. She was protective and ferocious, and who the hell can’t relate to that? I’m a huge fan of Solange’s music. When I Get Home is one of my all-time favourite albums. I think she’s a genius. One of the reasons I’m so enthralled by her work is because she seems so utterly unconcerned with what others may think of it. She’s not selling herself as a brand or icon. This is not to pit her against her sister, something people have done from the very beginning of her career, even though their music is so different. It’s more a reminder that keeping up an image of Perfection is tough and one that few people can or want to do.

Beyoncé can pretty much do whatever she wants to, and since Lemonade, she’s continued to keep her private life within her grasp and away from the cameras. Jay is in the midst of legal proceedings regarding a woman who accused him of rape, whom he is now suing for defamation after she dropped her case. While many people have used this case as a way to claim that Beyoncé was involved in Diddy’s serial rapes, publicly she remains pristine. You won’t see her flinch, even on CCTV footage.