Saturday the world stopped. No not just the people. Literally, Earth stopped spinning on its axis. Birds stopped chirping. Seas calmed. Clocks stopped ticking. Donald Trump stopped talking. The world literally stopped as Beyoncé debuted her video album LEMONADE on HBO.
You know you have the music game on lock when you single handedly made every black household pay their cable bill on time just to make sure they got the HBO free preview weekend.
I must say that from the opening I was captured. It didn’t take long for me to figure out the overall theme for this album, though. RELATIONSHIPS. And in a typical relationship, things happen. People cheat. Tires get slashed. Sometimes you get maced and chased up the street by a crazy woman with a baseball bat. True Story! Hey, shit happens. And for Beyoncé and Jay-Z that’s no different. LEMONADE is personal. Very personal. So personal that I actually thought that the title should have been “Tea.” (Sidenote: You know you got to be hella mad at your man’s “cheating” to put him on blast premium cable. I am just saying.) This was like a digital divorce at first. My eyes were big. To be honest, I felt kinda funny watching at the beginning .
I remember one time “Bae” and I went on a vacation to Miami with another couple. In the middle of dinner one night the other couple began to argue and tears flowed from the wife as some personal revelations came out. Bae and I knew we shouldn’t be witnessing this but we couldn’t turn away from this verbally violent argument. It was like watching a fight video on World Star.
That’s what LEMONADE is. It’s like that couple fighting at dinner. It’s emotional. It’s violent. It’s jealous. It’s hurting. It’s colorful. It’s forgiving. It’s loving. It’s accepting. It’s beautiful. Its entertaining. It’s honest. And that is why I think that LEMONADE is the most creative piece of art that I have experienced in this short year of 2016. It was like viewing a Picasso with words, music, colors, and lots of anger. LEMONADE is the kind of project that makes you want to delete all of your DM’s just in case your lady gets the urge to go through them. LEMONADE is the kind of project that makes your woman bring up that shit from 2011 because she didn’t get a chance to address it the way that Beyoncé did. LEMONADE is the kind of project that has the “Bey Hive” trying to decode who the “Becky with the good hair” is, assuming it’s fashion mogul Rachel Roy, only to confuse it with TV Personality/Chef Rachel Ray, and troll the shit out of her with bumble bee and lemon emojis on her Instagram page. Yeah, THATS what LEMONADE is. A beautiful,vulnerable, and intimate look into the humanity of an icon. LEMONADE is the kind of project to make me enter another email address just so that I can get another 30 day free trial on TIDAL
just so that I can view it again, cause you know, I am probably NOT going to pay my cable bill on time next month.