It's been a month since the Grammy's which means it's been a month since Beyoncé lost Album Of the Year. If you think that Lemonade is just a regular Beyoncé album then you've been terribly mistaken. Just like self-titled, she released a brilliant visual for Lemonade and America nor the music industry has been the same since. Originally the album was presented to the public as a piece that would be about her marriage with Jay-Z and the possibility of him cheating on her. Evidently, it has become a pop culture phenomenon and I honestly can't see our country moving forward without the mention of Beyoncé's work.
Watching Beyoncé lose was hard, I wasn’t all that shocked but it still hurts cause anytime we take one step forward, we end up two steps back.
Lemonade shows the complexity of blackness by having women of all different shades and sizes featured in the film. In Sorry, she pays homage to the Yoruba tribe by emulating the Goddess of Oshun and hired Nigerian artist Lalou Senbanjo perform the Sacred Art of Ori, a religious Yoruba-inspired art form that he himself has created, using Bey's dancers as his canvas.
Samples Malcolm X's speech 'Who Taught You To Hate Yourself' where he notoriously states "The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black women."
In Daddy's Lessons, she reps her Texas roots through a traditional country song to signify the genre's roots.
In Love Drought, she presents us with imagery of the Igbo Landing; the site of a mass suicide of Igbo slaves that occurred in 1803 at St. Simmons Island, Georgia.
And of course, in Formation, she addresses police brutality, black culture and the city of New Orleans after Hurrican Katrina, 11 years after the fact. While sampling Messy Mya, a beloved viral sensation that became a big part of the New Orleans gay community.
She also features the mothers of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. She rocks a Nefertiti and other African-inspired attire throughout the piece.
There are so many topics that Lemonade touches base with, including love, family, marriage, relationships, feminism, womanism, blackness, but most importantly black womanhood. Beyoncé not only told her story but she told a story that has never been heard of, never been discussed until as of late and that is the struggle of the Black American woman. We are not only brought into a society that discriminates us because of what lies between our ties but because of the darkness of our skin. As women, we are taught at very young age to serve others and are often left to suffer in silence. Being that women are treated as second-class citizens more often than not, and black people barely treated as people, evidently creates an unstable environment for the black women. She is unable to secure herself in her blackness nor her womanhood. So she falls back and watches her husband, her children and society leave her behind with all the gifts and all the love she gave them.
Since I merely thought that this was a film about infidelity, I didn’t think that I would be able to relate to the different chapters. For someone who has never been in a relationship, let alone in love, everything I felt was second hand but then I proceeded to think about my mother. My parents are originally from Equatorial Guinea and moved to the U.S when they were young, and ended up meeting in New York at a family function. Being African immigrants, my parents had it hard, both of them came to this country not knowing any English and they got the really shitty jobs that the everyday American doesn’t want. My family ended up living in a 3 bedroom apartment in Alexandria, Virginia. My Uncle was the head of the family at the time, but he ended up passing away.
Both my parents left for the funeral but only my mother came back. Little did I know my Dad was next in line so he never got the chance to come back because he had to handle things back home. During his time away, he had cheated on my mom with a woman back home and she was expecting. Meanwhile, my mother was struggling with rent, keeping up with her job and her mental health so hearing that was a hard blow for her. My mother was heartbroken, she had given so much of herself to this man who only really saw her as the mother of his children. As I’ve gotten older I noticed that this has become a pattern, within my own culture and within black culture in America. So when Beyoncé said ‘Am I talking about your husband or your father’ I had to take a minute because she came for my life. That was when everything kinda just clicked for me and I saw that the message was even deeper than what I had thought.
With the release of Lemonade, we all got the chance to see Beyoncé as something other than a performer. She showed us her weak side, she showed us vulnerability. She showed the world that black women cry too. She opened up a conversation amongst black women that trenscends into mainstream media and for that, I am forever grateful to Beyoncé because she assured me that I wasn’t alone. That when one of us prospers we all prosper because they don’t get to write our stories anymore, they don't get to erase us from history anymore, they don’t get to silence us anymore.
