“Jay-Z cheated!”
“Oh Jay-Z must be in such deep shit now”
“I can’t believe Beyonce is still with him”
“I wonder who Becky with the good hair is?”
These are the types of things I have been hearing in relation to Beyonce’s new album, LEMONADE. And they’re not what it’s about.
Last week, Beyonce blessed the world with her new album, titled LEMONADE, accompanied with an hour long visual album. This visual album is an absolute cinematographic masterpiece, that tells the story of of Beyonce’s grieving process dealing with the betrayal of someone she loves. However, there is so much more to this artistic expression than what memes and E! News has diminished it to.
This is not a slam album of Jay-Z, attempting to embarrass him and make him look bad.
This is not a slam album of “Becky with the good hair”, or any other woman for that matter.
This is an album about the ways that love, loss, betrayal, and strength have intertwined their way through Beyonce’s life, and led her to the strong, happy place she is today.
The visual album takes you through 12 stages of grief: intuition, denial, anger, apathy, emptiness, accountability, reformation, forgiveness, resurrection, hope, redemption. The story begins with Beyonce realizing she has been betrayed, and then takes the viewer on a journey with Beyonce as she is first angry, and then empty, and then ready for a new beginning. Her album is laden with references to her father, and sometimes it is difficult to tell when she is talking about Jay-Z or talking about her father. In this way, Beyonce expresses that not only has she been betrayed by someone she loves, but that this is not something she is unfamiliar with.
It is also inarguably a celebration of blackness, and the strength of black women. The video is filled with beautiful black women in their full natural beauty, and makes constant reference to the strength black women must have. One song in her album, Freedom, discusses how freedom is still not equally available to everyone in the United States, and is accompanied by visuals of the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and more women who have lost important men in their life. Subjectively, these women, who have endured so much, but still retain their ability to love, are part of the strength that Beyonce found to forgive and overcome.
Jay-Z also makes an appearance in the film, in a deeply raw and emotional scene filled with love and openness. As Beyonce finds the strength to forgive him, she asks him to show her his scars as well, to open up to her, and admit that he has hurt himself in the process of hurting her. And he does so; the original gangster, tough guy, king of the game, lays at Beyonce’s feet and opens up to the women he loves. This beautiful display of emotion is the turning point in the film, when Beyonce and Jay-Z begin to come back together, and realize the strength of their love for one another.
The film surmises with a home video clip of Beyonce’s grandmother at a family party. He grandmother delivers the famous line, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. And that is exactly what Jay and Beyonce did. Their relationship has not been perfect, and they have both hurt one another. However, they took that betrayal and they turned it into strength. Because they have gone through this together, they are now stronger, more open, and more in love.
This is what lemonade is about.
It is about finding love within betrayal.
It is about finding strength in times of weakness.
It is about overcoming, and coming out better on the other side.
It is about love.