If you are like me and are really confused about what is up all the drama surrounding the spontaneous release of Beyoncé’s new album "Lemonade," you are in the right place.
This is not the first time that Beyoncé released an album to the unsuspecting public. Back in 2013, she released her fifth solo album dubbed "Beyoncé" without public knowledge that it was being released. Now, in 2016, Beyoncé did it again, except there is one large difference between the albums "Lemonade" and "Beyoncé." The newest Beyoncé album is an hour-long visual album released on Tidal (Jay-Z’s music streaming app).
Recently, Beyoncé has been becoming more and more politically active. Ever since her release of "Formation" during the 2016 Superbowl, she received many negative comments for her use of Black Panther dressed dancers. Activists were saying that the Black Panthers were comparable to the KKK, where this developed into a racial disparity all starting with Beyoncé (a pop icon, not a presidential candidate, if I may add).
So the part that we have all been waiting for, the story of the album "Lemonade." This album has a plot, just like a movie, where "Lemonade" describes the acts of being unfaithful in a relationship and concluding with the reconciliation of the relationship as a whole. During the beginning of the "movie," Beyoncé speaks to the viewer, asking, “Are you cheating on me?” Once there is clear infidelity in Beyoncé’s relationship, she acts by protesting us (the cheater and viewer) that we have cheated on the queen herself. But as soon as she begins to protest the cheater, she moves onto the reconciliation aspect of the album. She states, “Me and my baby gonna be alright, we gonna live a good life.”
Just like her song "Formation," she begins to go into the aspect of African American womanhood, where she gives experiences of this aspect of her life. She then introduces a section of Malcolm X’s speech where he 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 woman." She also goes on to speak about the Black Lives Matter movement, where she features the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and other black men who were killed. The mothers were seen holding portraits of their sons through this section of the visual album.
The story behind the title "Lemonade" is that Jay Z’s mother (Hattie) at her 90th birthday party had said, “I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.” This is where the title of the visual album comes from.
In conclusion, the visual album "Lemonade" by Beyoncé has many different parts to it. There is a section where infidelity is the main aspect, there is another part that speaks upon African American womanhood and lastly there is a part featuring the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, pertaining to the section where Beyoncé speaks of infidelity, there is no references that Beyoncé uses in order to show that Jay Z did in fact cheat on her. But it definitely was Beyoncé’s plan for the viewers to interpret her visual album in this way.
I hope this cleared everything up for you; now let's get in formation.
