(CNN)Hip-hop star Jay-Z talked candidly Saturday about his determination to save his marriage with singer Beyoncé, telling CNN's Van Jones that the couple had chosen to "fight for our love."
Rumors began to circle around the superstar couple in 2014 after leaked surveillance footage showed Beyoncé's sister, Solange Knowles, kicking the rapper in an elevator after the Met Ball.
Beyoncé went on to release her album "Lemonade," in which she dropped hints that the couple had hit a rocky patch in their marriage.
In his latest album, Jay-Z addresses his marital issues head on, writing an apology to his wife and the mother of his three children in the album's title track, "4:44."
"I apologize often womanize/ Took for my child to be born/ See through a woman's eyes/ Took for these natural twins to believe in miracles/ Took me too long for this song/ I don't deserve you," he rapped.
Asked by Jones during the premiere of "The Van Jones Show" why he chose to fight for his marriage, Jay-Z replied that his wife was simply "my soul mate, the person I love."
Couples experiencing problems can either "address it or pretend until it blows up," he said on the show, which airs Saturday at 7 p.m. ET on CNN.
"For us, we chose to fight for our love. For our family. To give our kids a different outcome. To break that cycle for black men and women," he added.
The key to working through marital difficulties, regardless of one's fame, is having "the tools to move forward," Jay-Z emphasized.
"We were never a celebrity couple -- we were a couple that happened to be celebrities. We are real people," he told Jones.
