Beyoncé

Lemonade

With all matters of the heart explored in extremely intimate detail it sees Beyoncé back on top of the pop world ready to slay like only she can.

Lemonade is so much more than an album; it’s a deep immersion in black art ... Here, Beyoncé is laser-focused on delivering her potent message of empowerment, and she is unafraid.

Lemonade is a stunning album, one that sees her exploring sounds she never has before. It also voices a rarely seen concept, that of the album-length ode to infidelity.

Lemonade ... feels like a success, made by someone very much in control ... Beyonce sounds very much like a woman not to be messed with. 

Lemonade is her most out-there album yet – both in the nakedness with which the notoriously private star is seemingly describing marital strife with husband Jay-Z, and in the huge scope of musical influences it encompasses, from wild and raw gospel and blues rock to precisely calibrated R&B.

Pain is claimed, womanhood is nurtured, blackness is celebrated and family is prioritized and used as weaponry within the textured, often times profane and deeply contextual offering.

‘Lemonade’'s first four tracks are a thrillingly honest sucker-punch from a famously guarded pop star.

You can argue about whether you’ll hear better pop albums this year and you may very well win that dispute, but Lemonade is that rare work where you will remember exactly where you were and exactly who you were with the first time you heard it. Few albums can lift themselves up to the level of “experiences”, but few albums could ever be considered as bold, complex, or resolute as Lemonade.

With Lemonade, Beyoncé has caused as much conversation as any single artist possibly could, and provided a one-of-a-kind look into her personal life without sacrificing any of her regality, something only she could do.

Whatever the degree of fictionality of the plot ... Lemonade arrives as a cohesive, masterfully crafted project that resists the ephemerality and disposability of the pop song format.

With its wealth of sonic adventure, its thoughtful merger of the personal and the political, and its four choice guest spots (Jack White; Kendrick Lamar; James Blake; Abel Makkonen Tesfaye AKA The Weeknd), Lemonade is a dazzling example of pooled talent coalescing around an iconic doyenne. There can be little doubt on whose head Prince’s crown should now sit.

Lemonade, is her most lyrically and thematically coherent effort to date, taking a concept—the breakup album—as old as the LP itself, and reinventing it in both presentation and narrative.

Romantic conflict is nothing new for her, but there is a degree of concentration and specificity, and an apparent disregard for appealing to commercial radio that makes Lemonade a distinct addition to her catalog.