About two-months-ago, many police unions around this country became so enraged about what they perceived to be an indignity on the character of law enforcement they announced multi-city boycotts in order to show their displeasure. Was it in disbelief to a pattern of certain officers arguably overstepping their authority, and killing unarmed men and women with little to no repercussions? No. Was it in disgust towards officials of authority, who’ve been slow to react in protecting both civilians and police officers from having to go through traumatic incidents, and whose aftereffects have caused widespread unrest and distrust? No.
Instead, the hill that many police organizations decided they wanted to fight on was a tantrum over Beyoncé Knowles performance during the Super Bowl halftime show, which featured the singer performing her track “Formation” while dancers raised their fists in “Black Panther-esque outfits.” This drew the ire of the usual suspects, with some law enforcement officials going so far as to blame Beyoncé for the deaths of police officers who were killed shortly after the broadcast. Saturday Night Live seemed to capture the zeitgeist by having a skit where white people suddenly realized Beyoncé is a black woman and might have opinions.
It’s this sort of personal and political subtext in her music which has made the Beyoncé’s sixth and latest album release turn some heads, and dominate entertainment headlines over the weekend. The premiere of the visual album Lemonade on HBO, and all 12 tracks for download, has been met with accolades for being a work that touches on both the big picture and deeply intimate struggles. The visual part of Lemonade, with seven credited directors, is a mishmash of interweaving styles, which mixes surreal imagery in a very Southern Gothic way. But lyrically, the album touches on the adversities faced by women, especially black women, and references slavery, growing up in the South, riots, Fox News, and police brutality among other things. And yet, this also a work which wants to say something about what it means to be a mother, to be a wife, and to be wronged. All of this has also engendered some of the same ire from the same usual suspects and in some of the stupidest ways possible.
From Wesley Morris at The New York Times:
“Lemonade” is less a dramatization than a daydream, infused with black magic, embracing — if only notionally — African tribalism, science fiction, menstruation and witchcraft. The music’s emotional odyssey is conjugal. (The song chapters are presented as stages — “intuition,” “denial,” “forgiveness,” “hope,” etc.) Most of the corresponding images commune with the psyche and with history. The Deep South — New Orleans, mostly — occupies the landscape … But she’s daring to think beyond herself. The heavy hangover of the piece involves what lots of men have done to lots of women, black women in particular. Between songs, we hear Malcolm X intone that no one has had it rougher than they have. Think about what it takes to make lemonade. You have to split open a lot of citrus, remove the seeds, strain for pulp and add a lot of sugar. It’s a process. Black women are good at lemonade ...
“Lemonade” feels like a cultural rebuke on behalf of lots of aching women, whether they’re standing on that plantation porch, watching from their living rooms, or running for president.
In an era where pop artists are usually criticized for producing material that doesn’t really say anything, things have gotten much more experimental recently. Rihanna tried to go in a new direction with Anti, and Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo attempted to be a messy gospel/hip hop album. Both were met with mixed opinions and results.
With Lemonade, the main theme of the album is perseverance, and the work is an experiment to examine how deep the pain and hurt flows. It’s title is attributed to Hattie White, Jay Z’s grandmother, who is quoted saying: “I was served lemons but I made lemonade.” The album features collaborations with Diplo, the Weeknd, Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, Jack White, The-Dream, Animal Collective, James Blake, Father John Misty, Kendrick Lamar, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, with influences from Led Zepplin too. The visual album also features tennis star Serena Williams twerking, with some seeing it as a defiant expression against what society considers beauty to be for a black woman, and an interlude where a young man discusses what Barack Obama’s presidency has meant to him.
But at the center of it all is a very personal story of a woman who has been betrayed. A significant part of Lemonade is a woman that’s been taken for granted, pushed aside, and asking “Are you cheating on me?” to a man that’s been slipping. The first lines of “Pray You Catch Me” are: “You can taste the dishonesty, It's all over your breath.” The woman knows about “Becky with the good hair,” telling her significant other that “big homie better grow up,” and “what a wicked way to treat the girl who loves you.” Because of these and other lyrics in the album, it has reopened speculation about the state of Beyoncé and Jay Z’s marriage, and how autobiographical the album should be seen? Since the great big elevator fight, there have been persistent rumors about the couple, and Lemonade seems to indicate there have been some “troubles” in the Bey-Hova relationship. And the aftermath of Lemonade’s release has seen people across social media lashing out at whomever they suspect to be the mistress behind the music.
From Alexis Petridis at The Guardian:
If you want to compare her to an old soul legend, it’s more Here, My Dear than What’s Going On … In the film that accompanies the album … she does everything to express her displeasure at her husband’s behaviour short of appearing holding aloft a pair of scissors in one hand and Jay Z’s severed testicles in the other.
She’s seen tearfully committing suicide, smashing things up with a baseball bat, destroying cars by driving over them in a monster truck and throwing her wedding ring at the camera, as well as reciting the alarmingly visceral poetry of Warsan Shire – best known as the author of that oft-quoted line about how no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark – much of which sounds less like the words you usually hear issuing from an R&B divas mouth than something the late Richey Edwards would have come up with around the time the Manic Street Preachers made The Holy Bible: “till the blood spills in and out of uterus, wakes up smelling of zinc, grief sedated by orgasm”.
And yet, this is also an album that wants to say something beyond just a relationship. This is music about indignities, and the lyrics argue a flawed marriage is just the start of indignities which black women endure. If they can’t be treated right in the most personal of relationships, by someone who is supposed to be there and the rock on which one trusts and loves, then the world offers no more solace. In fact, the world’s thorns are sharper and can be even more barbarous.
How this ties into the bigger picture is glimpsed through appearances by the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown in the visual album, who are seen holding pictures of their dead sons. The track “Freedom” has Beyoncé saying: “I break chains all by myself, won’t let my freedom rot in hell.”
About two-years-ago, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah had an article which attempted to understand why Beyoncé’s fans are so fervent to defend her against any and all criticism. Kaadzi Ghansah found she is “a symbol of triumph” for many women of the control they aspire to in their own lives to “vanquish the hurt,” with it especially true among black women who want to celebrate another black woman who’s found success on her own terms. And that is what makes Lemonade a very interesting contrast to the images both Beyoncé and Jay Z have cultivated. This is someone who exudes command as Sasha Fierce that just released an album about being emotionally destroyed. On the other side of things is a man who’s known for “Big Pimpin’” and “99 Problems” minus one seemingly humbled in a very public way.
From Carrie Batton at The New Yorker:
As the project unfurls, you cannot help but wait for the tone to shift from despair to hope. And, because she is Beyoncé, whose perfectionism extends to the bonds of her personal life, it does. Jay Z, the subject of so much spite and fury, enters the frame about two-thirds into the project. We see the back of his neck, his hands stroking Beyoncé’s bare calf, he and his wife in a cautiously loving embrace. The project shifts quickly toward redemption; there is a heavy-handed image of a baptism, along with footage of Jay Z and Beyoncé getting matching tattoos on their fingers. “My torturer became my remedy,” she says, “so we’re gonna heal.” This moment is designed to signal relief. But there is a spirit of defeat here—love and hope cannot hold a candle to what she has shown us with her pain. There is a sense that Beyoncé is yet again pulling the curtain closed after letting us see so much. Healing means retreating back into herself, her soul made elusive once again.