Beyoncé Drops "Morning Dew" Remix With Jay-Z

Beyoncé and Jay-Z love to zigzag. As the Hive faithful wait on whatever the next project in Bey's three-act trilogy will be, she found a way to feed the streets earlier this summer by finally formally releasing “Morning Dew (Donk),” a fan-favorite leak from her self-titled sessions that's been circulating for years. Meanwhile Jay fans eagerly await his return to the booth—his last real verse was 2022's “God Did.” As Jay's extended absence from rapping wore on, most fans figured his return would be on a capital r-Rap song, if not a single of his own. Maybe he'd lay the Roots Picnic freestyle down over a fire beat from one of his go-to superproducers the same way he used to do old Hot 97 freestyles, or jump on a track with an expected contemporary like Clipse, Rick Ross or DJ Khaled. Well, the sabbatical is finally over today in the most unexpected way with the Carters coming together on wax once again for a “Morning Dew” remix featuring new bars from the God MC.Jay and B have about 20 different songs together; on the first couple of listens their latest collaboration seems spiritually closest to “Drunk in Love.” They're turning up on this one, a vibe that gets set before Jay even saunters on to the track. For starters, it's a real remix: where the original song—which credits production to Pharrell and Bey—is airy and ethereal, the remix amps the beat up with interpolations of everything from Sheck Wes' rowdy anthem “Mo Bamba,” to, fittingly, Soulja Boy's classic “Donk” and even The Isely Brothers' “Between the Sheets."It's at that point when Jay descends from the rafters (in a nice callback to the time he most famously rapped over a “Sheets” sample) kicking the same kind of raunchy husband talk he did on “Drunk” with lines like “Bitch so bad I had to give her my last name" and references to their matching marital tattoos.But this time he's a little too annoyed to stay on theme. As the verse goes on he warns anybody “talking reckless” to ”shut the fuck up" (with Beyoncé in the background mean-mugging through the ad-lib) and he fully pivots his attention to the haters talking down on himself, his wife, and anyone in their circle. Then things really take a swerve just as it seems like he's winding down… the Sheck sample returns and Jay goes full Jigga Man kicking a refrain to end things off: “I caught a fuckn-gga hatin on my wrist/I caught a hoe n-gga hatin on my bitch.” He hasn't sounded this fed up since 1999.It's funny: when Jay explained why he didn't jump on the Clipse album last year even as the whole rap world expected him to, he told me it was because he had so much going on in his personal life—specifically, intense and unprecedented feelings of anger towards the fallout from the 2024 civil lawsuit brought against him—that “the first thing that I say, it has to be said from me.” Additionally he said that that anger was clouding his creative process, but that he had to “get it out” to move forward. Someone pressing play on this cold might expect a cookie cutter pop verse, but no, Jay is clearly still working out his anger and disdain, (a process that started with his a capella freestyle in May) so much so that he finds himself talking greasy on an R&B record. It'll be interesting to see where he goes next, if the Money Cut is really ushering in a new era of music, to say nothing of how Beyoncé might springboard into Act 3 off of this or what else she might liberate from the vault. But for now let's just enjoy a worthy addition to a long list of heaters from the two GOATs. Maybe this will start the long overdue Everything Is Love reappraisal.