On April 23, Beyoncé dropped yet another chart-toppling album titled “Lemonade” and this time, it's visual (Leight, 2016). On the Billboard Hot 100, Beyoncé has now beat Taylor Swift’s record of 11 songs and created a new goal to reach: 12. That means every song on her album has made it to the Hot 100, and no one even knew she was going to be dropping an album. Experts consider this to be a very clever marketing trick, allowing Beyoncé to make a bigger statement, especially when she withholds music rights from certain platforms. All of this is done with hopes that the fans will react positively to the new music and gobble it up. So far, this tactic has proved to be successful for Beyoncé (Andrews, 2016).
In Yoncé’s last album, she drew attention to particularly scandalous topics that she never had before. Now, in this album, Beyoncé shifts focus to her as a real person instead of as Queen B (Andrews, 2016). None of the beautiful voice-over poetry could have been done without the help of Warsaw Shire (Leight, 2016), a Somali poet who won the inaugural prize for African Poetry in 2013 through Great Britain’s Brunel University (France, 2016). The poet revealed back in 2012 that she, “write[s] with music” (France, 2016). She noted how she never planned for her literature to actually be at one with music, but sometimes a little magic is worked and the two worlds collide (France, 2016). Even other singers, like Adele, are praising Beyoncé for a job well done on her album (Strecker, 2016).
There has been a lot of speculation, though, as to who Beyoncé’s lyrics are directed towards. Critics and fans think that the album’s main audience is Queen B’s king, Jay-Z. Some of her lyrics are riddled with signs that there’s been trouble in paradise, like, “Who the f*ck do you think I am? / You ain’t married to no average b*tch, boy / ... / This is your final warning / You know I give you life / If you try this sh*t again / You gon' lose your wife” from her song Don’t Hurt Yourself (Shepard, 2016).
Fans are outraged at the thought of Jay-Z possibly cheating on their beloved Yoncé. One lyric in particular that seems to be eating away at the fans’ hearts is from her song Sorry, “He only want me when I'm not on there / He better call Becky with the good hair” (Shepard, 2016). Who could this mysterious Becky be? Many are speculating that designer, Rachel Roy, is the woman behind the drama. Now, talks of Rita Ora being Becky are buzzing around the Beyhive (Rogers, 2016).
Honestly, though, maybe this Becky girl is all made up; artists have done and fabricated much worse to draw attention to themselves. If Queen B is smart enough to drop not one, but TWO surprise albums and have all 12 songs on the second reach the Billboard Hot 100, she’s smart enough to make up an attention-drawing scandal. Whatever the reason for which she wrote the lyrics, I give her props. She's an intelligent, empowered woman who stands up for herself. At the end of the day, only time will tell what comes of Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Becky. Until then, we’ll just have to keep playing “Lemonade” on repeat.
