The actual use of the term "cavalier" is a direct reference to Jay-Z's close friend LeBron James who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers. It's all over your breath as you pass it off so cavalier." Ever since they were first married in 2008, Beyonce and Jay-Z have dodged rumours about infidelity and jealousy. Beyonce sets the tone for the whole album with the first lyric of the opening track Pray You Catch Me as she sings: "You can taste the dishonesty. Throughout the entire Lemonade album, she mentions Jay-Z's dishonesty eighteen times over eight tracks. What we have found from Lemonade is that this the most honest album she has released to date - and Beyonce is certainly not to be messed around with.
Now we have even more cryptic clues and hidden meanings to decode throughout her new album. But anyone who perceives my message as anti-police is completely mistaken." During her Super Bowl halftime performance, when she performed Formation, many were calling for a Beyonce boycott as they believed the message was "anti-police." Beyonce told Elle magazine in an exclusive interview earlier this month, "I’m an artist and I think the most powerful art is usually misunderstood. The short film, also titled Lemonade, premiered on HBO on April 23rd (proving only Beyonce has the true power to make everyone stay in on a Saturday night) and the twelve track album was released exclusively on Tidal thereafter.Īfter the launch, the Twittersphere went into overdrive: Why is Beyonce attacking Jay Z? Who is Becky with the good hair? Is her marriage over? Save the speculation however as Queen Bey has made it very clear that she does not like her lyrics to be misunderstood. “If you try this shit again/You gon' lose your wife.” In support, White offers a word to the wise: “Love God herself.Just when we all thought Beyonce couldn't possibly slay anymore - she drops her album Lemonade and kills it with her hard-hitting lyrics. “This is your final warning,” she says in a moment of unnerving calm. Through tears, even Beyoncé has to summon her inner Beyoncé, roaring, “I’ma keep running ’cause a winner don’t quit on themselves.” This panoramic strength–lyrical, vocal, instrumental, and personal–nudged her public image from mere legend to something closer to real-life superhero.Įvery second of Lemonade deserves to be studied and celebrated (the self-punishment in “Sorry,” the politics in “Formation,” the creative enhancements from collaborators like James Blake, Robert Plant, and Karen O), but the song that aims the highest musically may be “Don’t Hurt Yourself”-a Zeppelin-sampling psych-rock duet with Jack White. Billed upon its release as a tribute to “every woman’s journey of self-knowledge and healing,” the project is furious, defiant, anguished, vulnerable, experimental, muscular, triumphant, humorous, and brave-a vivid personal statement from the most powerful woman in music, released without warning in a time of public scrutiny and private suffering.
The details, of course, are what make it so relatable, what make each song sting.
Both the album and its visual companion are deeply tied to Beyoncé’s identity and narrative (her womanhood, her blackness, her husband’s infidelity) and make for Beyoncé's most outwardly revealing work to date. The speech-made by her husband JAY-Z’s grandmother Hattie White on her 90th birthday in 2015-reportedly inspired the concept behind this radical project, which arrived with an accompanying film as well as words by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire. “I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.”
An elderly woman’s voice cuts in: "I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up,” she says. There’s one moment critical to understanding the emotional and cultural heft of Lemonade-Beyoncé’s genre-obliterating blockbuster sixth album-and it arrives at the end of “Freedom,” a storming empowerment anthem that samples a civil-rights-era prison song and features Kendrick Lamar.