Despite the numerical misnomer in its title, “’03 Bonnie & Clyde” came out 15 years ago, on Jay-Z‘s hit double album, The Blueprint 2, and to celebrate, his wife Beyonce posted a series of .gifs from the 2002 music video on her Instagram page. The single was the couple’s first pairing on record and reached no. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2002, becoming Jay-Z’s second top ten single and Beyoncé’s first as a solo artist. The song’s release was the first indication of Jay-Z’s and Beyoncé’s romantic status, starting rumors swirling for a good long while before the pair confirmed that they were dating by getting married in secret, then revealing their nuptials in 2008. It eventually became a fixture of their live sets together, especially during their On The Run Tour in 2014.
The clips Beyonce posted from the iconic video include the intro sequence, where Jay asks “Are you ready, B?” and the infamous “Don’t let the necessary occur” mean-mug shot, as well as the closeup of the pair’s matching Timberland boots and Beyonce throwing up the Roc-A-Fella diamond hand sign for the first time. Since then, the couple has become hip-hop royalty as one of the richest families in rap (to the point of dropping $88 million for a house in LA), and a legitimate pop culture power couple, with every move monitored closely by fans of hip-hop and celebrity gossip alike, with events such as the birth of their twins sending the internet into a collective frenzy, and their marriage becoming the subject of two of their biggest albums (and cultural moments) — Lemonade and 4:44, respectively — ever.
Cheers to fifteen years. May Jay never go Eric Benet again.
