While their marriage may have its flaws, EVERYTHING IS LOVE frankly doesn’t. It’s a storybook ending for two people crazy in love who never gave up on each other — or their craft.
A timely document that shows even the most powerful couple in hip-hop can still endure the most trying and human of challenges.
Although not as strong a project as either ‘Lemonade’ or ‘4:44’, The Carters’ first joint LP still succeeds in defying the attempts to diminish negative portrayals of their relationship and black achievement.
As with The Avengers, your previous investment in the Carters will dictate your current enjoyment. But it’s hard not to feel something when the duo ... ends its impossibly luxurious extravaganza by simply repeating that the two are “happy in love.” It’s a pop fairy tale just real enough to believe in.
The Carters round out a trilogy of confrontational albums about their marriage with something lighter but no less resonant. It is a celebration of resilient black love and proud black extravagance.
Everything Is Love certainly doesn’t have the musical expansiveness of Lemonade. There are neither ballads nor bangers, and not much in the way of melodic song construction at all. Rather, these are snappily repetitive beats on which the stars can put across their message as a form of hip hop conversation.
It would be enough for the Carters to make their point with sly references and double-entendre, but what makes Everything is Love so impactful is that it’s musically on-par with anything else either artist has released in their careers.
The album ultimately serves as a vehicle to make their art consistent with their reality – a feat that the Carters have attempted individually and conquered collectively.
At times an opulent spectacle and at others a full-bodied avowal of devotion, Everything Is Love stands as a monumental testament to keeping it real.
It might lack urgency, but it’s an accomplished, glossy finale.
This isn’t an album of ‘Crazy In Love’ or ‘Drunk In Love’ successors. It’s an album of love, and all the forms it can take in and outside of you.
Throughout Everything Is Love, Jay and Bey are at ease, a contrast to their previous solo releases and an epilogue of sorts to the gossip that has surrounded their relationship since 2014. For this reason it isn’t always the most substantial record, flexing and braggadocio abound, but it’s an enjoyable collection of tracks from the power couple.
Everything Is Love, the celebration of marriage and all of its foibles, is but the last chapter in a premeditated, pre-planned victory.
There’s a sense of immediacy and even unpredictability in the most restless moments on Everything Is Love, which saves the album from being a rather static and defiant contemplation of The Carters’ victories.
EVERYTHING IS LOVE is a monumental ode to the power of the hustle, and that alone can carry it when it delves into musically unremarkable territory.
On Everything Is Love, Beyoncé and JAY-Z throw what you think will be the world-shaking Juneteenth party of the year – but it turns out to be their recommitment ceremony.
Everything Is Love relies too heavily on its star power to feel anywhere near as consequential as Lemonade or 4:44.
Unlike other penetrating relationship sagas — Richard Linklater’s The Before Trilogy comes to mind — EVERYTHING IS LOVE is about the veneer of a successful marriage, and it plays like a press release, a publicity stunt designed to communicate to the world how great Beyoncé and JAY-Z are doing.
#6 | / | Associated Press |
#6 | / | People |
#7 | / | Complex |
#8 | / | Us Weekly |
#10 | / | Billboard |
#14 | / | The Interns |
#17 | / | Gaffa (Denmark) |
#18 | / | Esquire (US) |
#24 | / | Thrillist |
#30 | / | BrooklynVegan |