This as well, the complete lack of lighting and effects on Nicki

Simplicity does not mean laziness.

Laziness implies that there was a level of not wanting to do work, not a controlled and purposeful minimalism.

This album cover is the perfect artwork for the project. BEYONCÉ was all about making the user experience the album as a complete piece of work again. By surprise releasing it with no notice and no prior promotion, it put all emphasis on the album itself, and this cover reflects that by giving it no real title, and simply stating who this album represents. As well, by releasing no singles before the release, every song on the album is giving equal importance and thus this cover reflects an egalitarianism wherein the music and videos that lie beneath the surprise are entirely uninfluenced by prior imagery.



The Self-Titled cover is impactful, hence why pink on black all-caps fonts are instantly associated with Beyoncé, the cover went through many revisions before achieving the desired punch and you can just stay mad that it's iconography is more memorable than a majority of your faves last album covers.
The album and it's visuals are link, and there's no reason why she should've done a typical pop-girl glamazon shoot when each of the visuals had associated photoshoots to represent the songs already. On that note, the single covers aren't video stills, they're actual photographs. There's a difference between taking a screencap of a video (a la the Glory cover) versus an actual photograph, hence why this was the booklet image for Flawless, but Beyoncé standing like this is not a scene in the videos.


You can try to spin this any way you want, but it's hilarious how you run into every thread looking to make a disparaging comment about Beyoncé, do something better with your time