For another, Beyoncé's not 'presentable for white sensibilities,' as the helpful explainer on RapGenius puts it. For one thing, many listeners had no idea what she meant, except that she was taking something abject and making it proud. While it's certainly possible to analyze her word 'bama,' as 'originally black slang for working class blacks arriving North from the South during the Great Migration,' the word's connotations aren't essential to the song. She has 'hot sauce' in her bag, and by extension her blood. Supposedly they tell her story, but they do so comically, as if she's an omelette made of excellent ingredients. The lyrics are bad, which is almost a shocking thing to say in 2017, after countless articles have been written analyzing the song's lyrics down to every last comma. The effect is that of a soul singer with a gorgeous voice rapping because she has to, because singing is too pretty for the rough, hoarse affirmations she wants to unleash.

Beyoncé speak-sings for half the song, only bursting into melody now and then, when the emotion and the beat overtake her. (If you're wondering what I mean by 'a killer hook,' listen to her song 'irreplaceable' and then try to get it out of your head.) What it has instead is a big drop, perfectly placed, and a hip-hop flow. It doesn't have a killer hook it just has certain sections that Beyoncé sings more than once. So much of Lemonade is awful, yet the album succeeds, thanks in large part to 'Formation.' This is remarkable because 'Formation' isn't all that great, either, at least not on paper. You don't have to make soul records that way on I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Loved You), Aretha Franklin simply channeled whatever emotions added up to the best song. (First the doubts, then the make-up sex.) It's a sign of Beyoncé's flustered ambition that both albums are concept albums about marriage, staying on message on almost every track. Consider this: if the two albums had been released in reverse order, they would sound and look equally true. She even invents a personal drama involving her relationship with Jay-Z, one that would seem more authentic if she hadn't used the same vocal tricks and music video avalanche to promote Beyoncé's fantasy of a carnal, adoring relationship. Having spent her whole life making art out of commercial imperatives, Beyoncé Knowles rises to a pinnacle of absolute artistic freedom, and adapts the only way she knows how: she gamely starts pretending to be an auteur. It's not so much playful as it is bewildered. Throughout most of the album, Beyoncé has nothing in particular she wants to say, and an infinite recording budget through which to filter all this nothingness. There's also the entire song 'Hold Up,' where Beyoncé quotes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs verbatim, as though their 2003 song 'Maps' is only important because she has chosen to (sort-of) cover it in 2016. Various producers litter her album with EDM dissonance, resulting in songs that only make sense when she's actually singing, then go swooping and careening around drunkenly the rest of the time (for example, on 'Forward,' her bizarre collaboration with James Blake). For example, there's Beyoncé's irritating experimentalism. There's something unnerving about Beyoncé's whole approach, and it's palpable when you listen to Lemonade. It only excites those who desperately want to be fooled.' Having an alter ego 'did not make her personality more complex mostly, it reminded people that Beyoncé doesn't really have any personality at all.' Greil Marcus comes to a similar conclusion: 'You didn't have to have an opinion about you only had to acknowledge her mastery, and it was impossible not to, even though the longer you looked, the less there was to see.'īoth pieces preceded Beyoncé's new album Lemonade, but they could’ve easily been written about it instead of 'Single Ladies' and the best of Destiny's Child. Klosterman concludes, 'As an artistic creation, Sasha Fierce did not work. The whole thing seemed so unnatural and out of character that the only explanation can be strategy. a character Entertainment Weekly described as her 'sensual, aggressive alter-ego'. In 2008, hyper-Christian DirecTV advocate Beyoncé Knowles released I Am.Sasha Fierce. Here's what Chuck Klosterman had to say about I Am.Sasha Fierce:

Just dance beyonce single ladies