MUSIC | Beyonce's Lemonade

Hello Creatives! Are y'all in formation while drinking lemonade or wah?!

This visual album review is lonnnng overdue! It's Beyonce's sixth solo album and it shatters a lot of theories. Many consider Lemonade to be document of some kind of truth, a film, an emotional or otherwise, then is seems Beyonce was saving the juicy details for her own story. That is because nothing she does is an accident, let us assume she understands that any song she puts her name on will be perceived as being her own personal relationship. With that being said, what we may think we know about her marriage after listening is the result of what Beyonce wants us to think. Lemonade being Beyonce's second visual album is accompanied by a slate of in depth and vivid videos.

Lemonade is a film as well, yet the album itself feels like a movie. It is an entire album of emotional discord and marital meltdown, from the world's most famous celebrity; it's also a major personal statement from the most respected and creative artist in the pop game.  

The songwriting is littered with scenes that are positively cinematic, it is bona fide. All over these songs, she rolls through heartbreak and betrayal and infidelity. Yet despite all the rage and pain in the music, she makes it all seem affirming, just another chapter in the gospel according to Beyoncé: the life-changing magic of making a great big loud bloody mess.

 There's nothing as blissed-out on Lemonade as "XO" or "Countdown" or "Love On Top" – this is the queen in middle-fingers-up mode. When the first four songs on an album add up to "you cheated on me and you will pay," then there's a country song about her daddy teaching her to solve her problems with a gun, it's hard not to believe Mrs. Carter might mean it when she sings about regretting the night she put that ring on it. Whatever she's going through, she's feeling it deep in these songs, and it brings out her wildest, rawest vocals ever, as when she rasps, "Who the fuck do you think I is? You ain't married to no average bitch, boy!" *one of my fav lines BTW!* She's always elided the boundaries between her art and her life – especially since she really did grow up in public. But by the time she gets around to telling her husband "Suck on my balls, I've had enough," there's an unmistakable hint that Jay-Z might be living the hard-knock life these days.

Beyoncé dropped Lemonade on a glorious Saturday night on April 23rd, right after her HBO special – one of those "world, stop" moments that she's made her specialty and right after it aired it was released exclusively on Tidal. But the public spectacle can't hide the intimate anguish in the music, especially in the powerhouse first half. She begins as a supplicant in "Pray You Can Hear Me," alone with her wounded heart, and then explodes in "Hold Up," with strings from Andy Williams' "Can't Get Used To Losing You" with a Soulja Boy coda, as she mourns a husband who let all her good love go to waste. 

Lemonade is her most emotionally extreme music, but also her most sonically adventurous, from the Kendrick Lamar showcase "Freedom" to the country murder yarn that struts. She mixes in a spoken-word snippet from Jay-Z's grandmother Hattie White, and other artists. Her guests range from James Blake in "Forward" to the Weeknd in "6 Inch". She goes full-on rock-queen in "Don't Hurt Yourself," sampling Jack White's sound in a more feistier way, as she compares herself to a dragon breathing fire – that's an understatement. 

Yet the most astounding sound is always Bey's voice, as she pushes to her bluesiest extremes, like the hilariously nasty way she sneers, "He's always got them fucking ex-cuuuu-ses." She hits some primal-scream moments in the devastating ballad "Love Drought." ("Nine times out of ten I'm in my feelings / But ten times out of nine I'm only human" is a stunning confession from a diva who's always made such a fetish out of emotional self-control.) "Freedom" and "Formation" reach out historically, connecting her personal pain to the trauma of American blackness, with the power of Aretha Franklin's Spirit in the Dark or Nina Simone's Silk and Soul. She can't resist adding a happy ending with "All Night," where the couple kisses and makes up and lives happily ever after, or at least until morning. But it's an uneasy coda, with the word "forgive" noticeably absent and the future still in doubt.

Whether Beyoncé likes it or not – and everything about Lemonade suggests she lives for it – she's the kind of artist whose voice people hear their own stories in, whatever our stories may be. She's always aspired to superhero status, even from her earliest days in a girl group that was tellingly named Destiny's Child. She lives up to every inch of that superhero status on Lemonade. Like the professional heartbreaker she sings about in "6 Inch," she murdered everybody and the world was her witness. Even the runs in "Hold Up" to "6 Inch" are arguably some of her bests, ever -- with an inclusion of clapback prowess *yasssss* ! 

Whether you believe that Jay Z cheated on Beyonce or she really regrets the night she put that ring on. Lemonade, a stunning album proves Beyonce to be able to transcend her sound into different genres and execute it well. This is my favorite project by Beyonce -- ever! Her depth, rawness, realness and embrace of her blackness is new to not only me, but the world entirely and it is undeniably refreshing. It also voices a rarely seen concept, that of the album-length ode to infidelity. Beyonce gives it a little time and remembers that she was raised to value hard work and spirituality. Lemonade highlights and celebrates a typical make-up and break-up aspects in relationships. As she states in "All Night" "nothing real can be threatened."

Best revenge is your paper!

Stay Creative, 

xo, Zaddy