Beyoncé: ‘Lemonade’ Review
9.5
GENRE: Pop/R&B
YEAR OF RELEASE: 2016In the music video for “Hold Up,” Beyoncé ambles slowly through a street in a ruffled yellow gown, flashing out smiles, her hair windblown as always. Then she grabs a baseball bat, smashes the windshield of parked cars and the windows of shops along the way, and goes back to smiling, looking vindicated. The video sums up the magnificence of Lemonade, her surprise-released sixth record that was accompanied by a movie—a visual album, the second of her career. With its slouched reggae beats and nonchalant lyrics, “Hold Up” is just a tiny portion of the album’s majestic montage of different genres. A bookmark in pop history, Lemonade proved Beyoncé to be a music scholar, a curator interlacing cultural and historical references with the events of her personal life. She tells her story her own way, spilling the beans, squeezing lemons, calling-out Beckys, offering critical political commentary, and, on the surface, making the world hate and forgive her husband just like she did.
In 2013, Beyoncé gave us glimpses into her marriage with Jay-Z. “I’m in my penthouse half naked/I cooked this meal for you naked/So where the hell you at,” she sang sweetly but firmly on “Jealous,” a track from Beyoncé, her self-titled blockbuster album. Three years later—and after the infamous elevator incident—she opens Lemonade with “You can taste the dishonesty/It’s all over your breath” in a saddening full-circle moment. “My lonely ear/Pressed against the walls of your world,” she goes on in “Pray You Catch Me,” granting us access to a level of intimacy we are not supposed to have, making us witnesses to her pain. The singer shielded herself from interviews in the years prior to the release of the revealing Lemonade, a tactic that stands to this day—since 2014, she has sat down for literally less than a handful of interviews. Since then, her music videos, album photoshoots, and songs have been the dots one must connect to create a Beyoncé image in their head.
Lemonade offers more than tidbits, though. From the videos to the music, lyrics, visuals, and packaging, everything coalesces into a door that leads straight into the Carters’ residence. If on Beyoncé the singer navigated towards a few flecks of confessional lyricism, on Lemonade, she throws the blinds and curtains out the window. Listening to the record is like listening to a neighboring couple’s discussion, albeit one-sided and beautifully orchestrated. Beyoncé croons, screams, screeches, and sings gently, all the while the arrangements change from reggae to trap to R&B to soul to rock to country. The genre-hopping abounds throughout the record in a cohesive array of different styles. What ties it all together? Beyoncé’s raw, honest delivery. She might have sung of being a diva or irreplaceable before, but here she allows herself to be vulnerable and unsure, which requires way more strength.
While every track on Lemonade is monumental on its own, they never stray from the cohesive narrative that shapes the album. On the self-emancipating “Sorry,” Beyoncé pledges to walk away from the broken marriage amidst flickering synthesizers, electro beats, and bells. On “Love Drought,” she decides to go back and work on the relationship, and on “Sandcastles,” she commits to staying and pardoning (“I made you cry when I walked away”). Track by track, her rage alchemizes into serenity and her resentment into forgiveness. This therapeutic aspect of Lemonade is just one of the many faces of an album that, with its utterances and deeply personal remarks, feels conspicuously crafted to dazzle listeners.
Samples are used left and right nowadays, but Beyoncé has a propensity for making them sound natural. On Lemonade, she weaves them so skillfully that it’s hard to recognize any familiar sound without further dissection. She lends drums from Led Zeppelin’s 1971 song, “When the Levee Breaks,” to belt her rage on “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” singing with the attitude of someone who has had it. “I smell that fragrance on your Louis knit, boy,” she scowls, supported by Jack White vocals in the chorus. On “6 Inch,” a slinky R&B song featuring The Weeknd, Beyoncé flaunts her hard-earned money over a sample of Isaac Hayes’ “Walk On By.” She then borrows the brass line from OutKast’s “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” for “All Night,” a redemptive R&B love song adorned by strings and horns. And then there’s “Freedom,” Beyoncé’s moving anthem dedicated to Black women, featuring Kendrick Lamar and three different samples.
On the country track “Daddy Lessons,” Beyoncé slides into the genre without demure— stomping and clapping and everything. She reminisces her Texan roots over acoustic guitars, harmonica, saxophone, and trumpets, sounding as natural as she does when performing her pop dance hits. Here, Beyoncé reclaims a genre with its roots tied to Black musicians from the South, adding weight to the cultural significance of Lemonade. And then there’s the show-stopping first single, “Formation,” a song she performed as a surprise guest at the 2016 Super Bowl. Emerging behind a marching band, she crashed the stage amidst snare and bass drums, referencing the Black Panther movement, Malcolm X, and Michael Jackson in a display of total bravura. In the video for “Formation,” set in New Orleans, Beyoncé depicts the impact of Hurricane Katrina and police brutality on Black communities.
Beyond the music, Lemonade journeys through the sorrows and victories of Black women and Black Americans in general, honoring their hardships, far from isolating Beyoncé’s traumas as something not generational. The album has been dissected and studied by many writers and journalists, who declare it a triumph of Black identity, something bigger than Beyoncé herself. By 2016, Beyoncé had metamorphosed into a woman of few words and bold statements, and Lemonade was her bravest yet. The record was her most cohesive body of work, the most important of her career, a jaw-dropping parade of intrepidity led by an artist serenading her roots, her family, and herself. If anything, Beyoncé proved that she didn’t need a last name—she was the Black Bill Gates in the making. She didn’t have to, but she did it anyway. “Cause I slay.”
Listen to Lemonade:
