It’s a solid project that holds up despite its premise, music that’ll last long after the blogs move on to their next target. Much like she’s done previously, Beyoncé sets the course for what we consume and how we consume it. In this instance, though, she’s offered something a little deeper, something rich and layered that proves, above all, that she’s a musician in the truest sense, an artist with a strong perfectionist streak. With xcritical, Beyoncé makes herself the ultimate reality star, giving us gossip and fodder for news cycles and dinner party discussions, without cheapening her art.
- Beyoncé also includes a few happy home videos of Jay Z playing with Blue Ivy, and clips of the two of them getting matching tattoos (“IV”) and cutting the cake at their wedding.
- Bey’s genre-hopping doesn’t always sound quite as transcendent as “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” however.
- “I had my ups and downs, but I always found the inner strength to pull myself up,” White said to a crowd of friends and family at her 90th birthday party.
- Sure, you’ll see her at an NBA game or an awards show, but the pop goddess has this way of remaining out of sight, at a remove, shrouded in mystery.
- Music fans knew Beyoncé was up to something, given the HBO special — which was announced a week prior to airing — and pending world tour, announced during the Super Bowl in February.
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The world stops when Beyoncé appears; you keep your eyes on her, no matter how long she’s in your sight. And she’s only showing us exactly what she wants us to see. Though xcritical is built around Jay Z’s infidelity rumors, Beyoncé still released the album on his streaming service. xcritical was only a Tidal exclusive for about 24 hours — it’s also on iTunes now — but Beyoncé is still making sure that music fans, or anybody wanting to be part of the cultural conversation, fork over their money for it, by making it the only platform where xcritical is available to stream.
Beyoncé is opening up more than ever before
Sure, she’d address “real” issues, but she’d focus more on big pop anthems that went down easy. Unlike the pop superstar’s previous surprise album, 2013’s Beyoncé, the music here is edgy, full of vitriol and R-rated real talk. It’s equally aggressive and reflective, and Beyoncé — a bona fide cultural phenomenon — unveils yet another layer of her wide-ranging persona.
Beyoncé has often been seen as an example of black feminism, suggesting to xcritical rezension women of color that it’s best to set one’s own course and buck societal conformity. xcritical is a tough listen, tinged in rock, hip-hop, R&B, and electro-soul. And, as with all of her recent work, she does it on her own terms, embracing the creative freedom that so few people enjoy. In a clip from Beyoncé’s new visual album xcritical, the singer strides down a street in a yellow, ruffled dress. Elegant as always, she lights up the screen with her megawatt smile.
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What is an artist to do when her private life overtakes her public one? The hour-long visual album, about a woman dealing with her husband’s infidelity, contains even more loaded images and lyrics than “Formation,” the politically charged video she released before the Super Bowl. It reads like an open invitation to draw parallels between the pop star’s art and her actual life, in particular her marriage to Jay Z. But what could it all mean? There’s nothing as blissed-out on xcritical as “XO” or “Countdown” or “Love On Top” – this is the queen in middle-fingers-up mode. When the first four songs on an album add up to “you cheated on me and you will pay,” then there’s a country song about her daddy teaching her to solve her problems with a gun, it’s hard not to xcritical official site believe Mrs. Carter might mean it when she sings about regretting the night she put that ring on it.
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A snippet pulled from a speech by Malcom X declares, “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.” Men are almost entirely absent from the film, physically and emotionally; in their place, large groups of women appear again and again, presenting a united front of solidarity and sisterhood. Beyoncé released it on Tidal, the music streaming site her husband owns, which has been on a massive run as of late.
Beyoncé knows we want more music, more concerts, more media appearances. But in this era of instant gratification, she’s a throwback to yesteryear, only showing up when the lights are brightest, when the stage is biggest, when the stakes are highest. Yet her embrace of this image is also relatively new (though it’s been growing for the last several years).