I keep seeing comments like these floating around about how Lemonade is all hype based on Beyoncé's overrated status, and that if she released the other girl's pop albums it would be critically acclaimed and media-praised and if the other pop girls released Lemonade it would be trashed:
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Originally posted by butterflysupreme
If Beyoncé released ANTi, it would be finally viewed as the masterpiece it is. However, thank God Rihanna made Anti and not Lemonade, she'd never serve something that bad again.
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Originally posted by Pikachu
critics hating on Britney as usual doesn't mean the album is bad. and a Hive member thinking a Britney album is bad doesn't make it bad either. if Britney and Bey switched albums there would be no way in hell you would be calling the album 'bad' and Glory would be a 80+ score easily, and that's just how transparent all of you are.
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I can't help but feel that many atrlers don't understand Lemonade at all. Lemonade is the culmination of Beyoncé's entire career, it couldn't be released by any other pop girl at any other moment at any other period of time. No album from any other pop girl could've been released by her and been an authentic Beyoncé experience.
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All of Beyoncé’s career has been leading up to Lemonade, including often overlooked songs such as “Black Culture,” “Grown Woman,” and “Creole.” “***Flawless” and “Superpower” are the preface to “Formation,” “Jealous” the prequel to the mid-sections of Lemonade. “Irreplaceable” stands in the doorway filing its nails somewhere between “Don’t Hurt Yourself” and “I Ain’t Sorry.” “Freakum Dress” is the PG-13 sister of “6 Inch.”
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Lemonade works for Beyoncé because it builds off centuries of the legacy of American black female cultural activism.
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From the minute the deeply complex "visual album" version aired on HBO, fans claimed Lemonade as the culmination of a century-plus's worth of African-American women's truth-telling, connecting Toni Morrison's visions to the striking imagery in films like Daughters of the Dust to the subversive celebrity of current icons like Serena Williams.
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It's not just a singular album, it celebrates centuries of black artists and their contributions to music, like how
it reclaims rock's black female legacy or channels
Nina Simone or even
African spiritual practices that survived the slave trade like Yourba/Oshun and
voodoo.It's not just another record about love or life. It's about generations of experiences.
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Lemonade is not simply another “he done me wrong” album or video. The relationship at the heart of the lyrics is a Trojan horse, opening to the shores of black womanhood as healing and salvation.”
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Who else could make an album this in the
now, this present, and this controversial by bringing in the mothers of those like Trayvon Martin killed by police violence forcing people to bring their feelings to the forefront?
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Maybe it’s because I’m a black woman. A black woman who cried tears when I read about Trayvon Martin or upon seeing those awful videos of Eric Garner and Sandra Bland, and then again each time murderers got away without so much as a slap on the wrist. I get how a privileged middle aged white man from Surrey doesn’t feel that pain, but when I saw Trayvon Martin’s picture I saw my nephew. When I saw Eric Garner, I saw my uncle. When I saw Sandra Bland, I saw my auntie. I get why you don’t get it.
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"The most disrespected person in America is the black woman," says X's voice. "The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman." The camera pans across faces of black women with weary smiles, a spotlight on those who rarely shine.
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I love Lemonade…. She has elevated the album into a visual artform with an authorship that black women in all industries are consistently denied. I'm also listening to, and open to, the critiques shared by other black women including femmes like Ashleigh Shackelford who have noted the absence of women of size and the ways that they remain absent from beautiful depictions like these. Enjoying the work should not prohibit us [from] remaining open and responsive to dialogue with our sisters about their representation in the art that we uphold and celebrate
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Who else could make an album dealing with the future of blackness and bringing to light black girls that will continue the legacy of blackness in America?
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The Black Future serves as a metaphor, and is represented quite literally in the film by the appearances of a host of prominent young black women from across the globe: teenage actresses Amandla Stenberg, Quvenzhané Wallis, and Zendaya; musical duos Chloe x Halle and Ibeyi; 21-year-old model Winnie Harlow; 21-year-old ballet dancer Michaela DePrince; and, naturally, Beyoncé's four-year-old daughter Blue Ivy. These young women and girls have got next, and Beyoncé makes sure we recognize that.
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Lemonade could only be made by Beyoncé because it takes powerful strides during her most cultural aware and loved time to make powerful statements:
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We are the women left behind. We are the women who have cared for other women’s children while ours were taken away. We are the women who work two jobs when companies won’t hire our men. We are the women caring for grandchildren as our sons are taken by the prison industrial complex. We are the women who march in the streets and are never marched for. We are the women expected to never air our grievances in public. We are the women expected to stay loyal to our men by staying silent through abuse and infidelity. We are the women who clean the blood of our men and boys from the streets. We are the women who gather their belongings from the police station.
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I also see tons of shade towards Lemonade for having so many collaborators. But all of her collaborators are working toward HER vison, HER music, and HER ideas.
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Naysayers will no doubt cite Lemonade’s voluminous contributor credits, which could match those that crawl at the end of a Hollywood picture, as proof that Beyoncé is less of an artist than the lonely singer-songwriter recording thoughtful music in a bedroom. Nonsense. She may not be DIY, but Knowles is no less the auteur than an actor-director who relies on the expertise of others to execute a commanding, self-determined vision.
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And the productions on Lemonade are brilliant. I don't think any other artist is putting out music with such innovative and carefully attuned productions.
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If you have ears and love brilliant production and hooks that stick, you'll likely arrive at the same conclusion. The run from “Hold Up” to “6 Inch” contains some of Beyoncé’s strongest work—ever, period—and a bit of that has to do with her clap-back prowess. The increasingly signature cadence, patois, and all-around attitude on Lemonade speaks to her status as the hip-hop pop star—but this being Bey, she doesn’t stop there. Via the album’s highly specific samples and features by artists like Jack White and James Blake, Lemonade proves Beyoncé to also be a new kind of post-genre pop star.
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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 like buckskin-era early-1970s Cher ("Daddy Lessons"). She mixes in a spoken-word snippet from Jay-Z's grandmother Hattie White, the obscure 1960s Mexican garage band Kaleidoscope, indie slop like Father John Misty, Animal Collective and (with a production credit) Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig. Her guests range from James Blake ("Forward") to the Weeknd ("6 Inch"). She goes full-on rock-queen in "Don't Hurt Yourself," making Jack White sound feistier than he has in years, as she compares herself to a dragon breathing fire – that's an understatement – and samples the John Bonham drum thunder from "When The Levee Breaks."
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To think that any other pop girl could have released Lemonade is ridiculous. I guess I'll end this long essay with a quote I particularly loved:
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Just ****ing listen to her.
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What do you think? Does atrl understand Lemonade?