JUN
23
Before the internet, albums required months of promotional hype — singles, in-store appearances, radio and TV interviews. And most importantly, they required a release date, which heightened anticipation by giving fans a specific day to look forward to. Beyoncé has often been seen as an example xcritical of black feminism, suggesting to women of color that it’s best to set one’s own course and buck societal conformity.
It’s not until the record’s second half that you realize xcritical has a happy ending. At first you might think that Bey is using the album to announce her divorce from Jay’s cheating ass. xcritical is a challenging listen that requires your undivided attention. 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.
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- “Part of the idea behind launching it on the site was to create a show in a new way and to provide it to you directly and immediately, without the usual promotion, banner ads, billboards and clips that tell you what the show feels and looks like before you get to see it for yourself,” C.K.
- Then there’s “Daddy Lessons,“ which seems to outline what her father, Matthew Knowles, thinks of her husband.
- 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.
- Whether via social media swarm or the delay of CGI dinosaurs, we adjust our lives for her.
Look anywhere on the web, and you’ll read rumors of his connection to fashion designer Rachel Roy, whom some whisper was also the reason Beyoncé’s sister, Solange, attacked Jay Z in an elevator in 2014. Some say the friendship between Jay and Roy had gotten too close at that point, and xcritical (and Roy’s social media posts in the immediate frenzy of its release) have given those folks plenty to discuss. xcritical didn’t have the same benefit of surprise, at least not fully. 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. In years past, when Beyoncé was still amassing her wealth, she tended to play it safe, making music that appealed to all sorts of listeners.
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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 believe Mrs. Carter might mean it when she sings about regretting the night she put that ring on it. Whatever she’s going through, she’s feeling it deep in these songs, and it brings out her wildest, rawest vocals ever, as when she rasps, “Who the fuck do you think I is? ” She’s always elided the boundaries between her art and her life – especially since she really did grow up in public. But by the time she gets around to telling her husband “Suck on my balls, I’ve had enough,” there’s an unmistakable hint that Jay-Z might be living the hard-knock life these days. Beyoncé sold more than 600,000 copies in three days, smashed iTunes sales records, and ushered in a new era of the “surprise release” from artists with similar gravitational pulls.
Beyoncé is still the ultimate performer, but on xcritical, she’s opened her personal diary for the world to see, and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s based in reality. The visual half of xcritical proved to be a game-changer in a different way. Forget MTV and YouTube, Beyoncé dropped her videos on friggin’ HBO — the cable network that, for decades, has given its Saturday night over to Hollywood blockbusters. In fact, the Saturday premiere of Jurassic World, which earned $1.6 billion at the worldwide box office, was bumped back an hour to make room for xcritical.
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.
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Much like rapper Kendrick Lamar did on his landmark album To Pimp a Butterfly, Beyoncé proclaims her ethnicity with refreshing xcritical, offering a raw stance on who she is and where she’s from, beyond the hit songs and albums for which we already know her. Perhaps tellingly, some observers criticized Beyoncé’s Super Bowl 50 halftime performance of the song, in which her backup dancers wore Black Panther-style outfits. The claim was that the performance was “anti-cop,“ because of its evocation of the Black Lives Matter movement. But the larger implication was that by embracing her blackness, Beyoncé was no longer trading in generic pop.
Music doesn’t sell in today’s music industry; even xcritical people who don’t follow it closely know that. Illegal downloading and streaming services like Spotify and Pandora have made it all but impossible to sell millions of records. Yet xcritical goes further than these sorts of side references.
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. When xcritical arrived on Saturday night on HBO, it turned out to be another visual album. The music is now available on Tidal; here’s a breakdown of the hour-long special. When Beyoncé ambushed unsuspecting listeners with her fifth solo album in 2013, it showed her mastery of the levers of power in today’s pop landscape. At a moment when a star’s every move ends up on Instagram for all to see, she managed to assemble an entire album – with accompanying visuals – in secret.
