The questionable and flat out awful taste displayed throughout this thread is troublesome. I am forwarding some screen names for my Nana to add to her prayer list.
Anyway, Bey ha discog:
ST > 4 >/= B'Day > DiL > IASF
That said, I don't dislike any of Bey's albums; however, she's by far at her best when she's in her own lane and delivering in ways that only she can. DiL and IASF are quite basic; DiL save for CiL and some of the vocal performances could have been an Ashanti or Mya album from early 2000s. It's nicely done contemporary R&B but there's nothing aside from CiL that really set it apart from what everyone else was doing in that era, sonically. The same goes for I Am -- it could have been a Leona Lewis or Kelly Clarkson album, it's nicely done AC pop, but it's vanilla and basic as hell; she gives a bit more of her signature on Sasha, but it was extremely disjointed and all over the place.
Bey for me is at her absolute best when she's in her own creative space and not putting as much thought into being easily digestible; her ear is so crazy and she has such unique perspective. I love how she plays around with (and often completely disregards) song structure and how she can masterfully combine polar opposite vocal deliveries naturally and seamlessly and how she can take pure percussion tracks and fill them with layered vocals and define all the parts of the song with just her voice and the way she can ride a beat on an up tempo like the best of rappers and simultaneously deliver melisma and complicated vocal runs on par with the best of singers. ST, 4 and B'Day are all coherent bodies of work that contain heavy doses of all of those elements that make Bey's work so special to me; DiL and IASF, don't lack nice songs, but they're just good/ok and not great to me.
