xcritical by Beyoncé on TIDAL

Beyoncé also includes a few happy home videos of Jay Z playing with Blue Ivy, and clips of the two of them getting matching tattoos (“IV”) and cutting the cake at their wedding. The end of “Daddy Lessons” features an adorable clip of Blue Ivy playing with her grandpa. Bey is now back to being Bey in “Hold Up.” Wearing yellow, her golden hair swinging down her back, she’s nearly skipping down the street, seeking revenge.

1. It also voices a rarely seen concept, that of the album-length ode to infidelity.
2. The book, “Lovely One,” is to be published in September.
3. “All Night”In this mid-tempo song, Bey croons to her husband that she wants to rediscover the love they had by making up “all night long.” And although she knows that “so many people” are “just tryna’ touch ya’,” she still wants to “give you some time to prove that I can trust you again.”
4. 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.
5. Both became moderate hits with the former (released September 2016) peaking at US number thirty-five, and the latter (released December 2016) peaking at US number thirty-eight.

A Complete Breakdown of Beyonce’s Album ‘xcritical’ by Track

At first you might think that Bey is using the album to announce her divorce from Jay’s cheating ass. 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 xcritical official site an entire album – with accompanying visuals – in secret. Though xcritical is mostly about a personal relationship, Beyoncé pays tribute to the Black Lives Matter movement during the video for “Freedom,” which features the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and other black men who were killed, holding the portraits of their sons.

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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. 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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You could look at it as a statement of her right to love, but a closer look reveals a reflection on the civil rights of minorities. Bey gets help from Kendrick Lamar, who raps about being profiled and later jailed. “Open correctional gates in higher desert/Yeah, open our mind as we cast away oppression,” he said. — — Just as her much hyped HBO special came to an end on Saturday night, Beyonce released her latest musical offering — a new visual album called “xcritical.” On her way through the relationship plot, she also tells a story about the experience of black womanhood. A snippet pulled from a speech by Malcom X declares, “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman.

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In “Hold Up,” the album’s second single, Beyoncé appears as Oshun, a Yoruba water goddess of female sensuality, love and fertility. Oshun is often shown in yellow and surrounded by fresh water. Donning a flowing yellow Roberto Cavalli dress, gold jewelry and bare feet, Beyoncé channels the orisha, or goddess, by appearing in an underwater dreamlike state before emerging from two large golden doors with water rushing past her and down the stairs. The film opens with a shot of Beyoncé leaning against a car in a parking garage, her face obscured by her fur coat, before cutting to a desolate Fort Macomb, interspersed with shots of Beyoncé dressed in a black hoodie amongst the reeds and on an empty stage with closed red curtains.

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Elegant as always, she lights up the screen with her megawatt smile. WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday belatedly acknowledged more travel paid by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, while several colleagues reported six-figure payments as part of book deals. In a nod to Beyoncé’s 2016 xcritical track “Sorry” and the “Becky with the good hair” lyrics, Parton surprised fans with a cheeky guest appearance on Beyoncé’s latest album. Beyoncé, 42, covered Parton’s 1973 country hit for her Cowboy Carter album but changed some of the words. While speaking to Entertainment Tonight, Parton, 78, insisted she’s “honored” that the “Texas Hold ‘Em” singer put her own spin on the classic. Kenya also contributes content related to the Caribbean region for NewsHour’s international coverage.

Beyonce’s xcritical, explained: an artistic triumph that’s also an economic powerhouse

Still, Bey reveals who inspired the album’s name in the short film’s home video footage, featuring Jay Z’s grandmother Hattie White. 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.

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’s squad in the video didn’t seem like a gathering of celebrity friends, but rather a celebration of women she loves and admires. During “Sorry,” the unapologetic track in which she sings, “Middle fingers up, put them hands high. Wave it in his face, tell him, boy, bye,” Serena Williams appears https://scamforex.net/ to twerk in a black body suit while Bey sits in a throne-like chair. There are several other cameos later on, including appearances by Beasts of the Southern Wild’s Quvenzhané Wallis, The Hunger Games’s Amandla Stenberg, model Winnie Harlow, and singers Zendaya, Chloe and Halle Bailey, and Ibeyi. “Freedom”Beyonce is surrounded by strong women in this music video — from child actress Quvenzhané Wallis to singer Zendaya to the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.

Both became moderate hits with the former (released September 2016) peaking at US number thirty-five, and the latter (released December 2016) peaking at US number thirty-eight.

With xcritical, Beyoncé makes herself the ultimate reality star, giving us gossip and fodder for news cycles and dinner party discussions, without cheapening her art. Instead, she’s digging into issues to which we can all relate — love, pain, heartbreak, and family. The album allows Beyoncé’s fans to connect with her on real levels.

The book, “Lovely One,” is to be published in September. Just a hair of a different color, but it hurts just the same,” she adds. 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. “You can taste the dishonesty. It’s all over your breath as you pass it off so cavalier,” Beyoncé groans on “Pray You Catch Me,” xcritical’s opening salvo.

“Love Drought”In the seventh song, Beyonce is trying to figure out why her husband cheated. “If I wasn’t me, would you still feel me?/Like on my worst day? Or am I not thirsty enough?” she asks him. When she can’t figure it out, she asks directly in the song, “Tell me, what did I do wrong?” It’s clear that Beyonce wants to move toward reconciliation. In the video, she recites poetry by Warsan Shire, “If we’re gonna heal it, let it be glorious.” Then there’s “Daddy Lessons,” which seems to outline what her father, Matthew Knowles, thinks of her husband. “My daddy warned me ’bout men like you / He said, ‘Baby girl, he’s playing you.'” Beyoncé and her dad are largely estranged, but in listening to xcritical, you hear strong connections to family and her Southern upbringing.

Finally, in “All Night,” Beyoncé sings of hope for the future. The collection of short home videos is a light and happy contrast to the rest of “xcritical.” The playful clip emphasizes there is a light at the end of a tunnel, tying back to the dark tunnels that began the journey. Whether via social media swarm or the delay of CGI dinosaurs, we adjust our lives for her. Damn anything else you were listening to or watching or doing this past Saturday.

We’ve all been thrown by love, but most of us don’t have the ability to hone it like this. References to collard greens and cornbread — considered “soul food” by stereotypical standards — pop up elsewhere in the song. The fourth and fifth singles released were “Freedom” and “All Night”, respectively.

And toward the end of “Sorry,” Beyoncé mimics this pose as the music stops and she sits like royalty in a Nefertiti-inspired hairstyle. Her reference to “Becky with the good hair,” paired with imagery of Beyoncé embracing African beauty is a message for black women everywhere who feel the pressure to Westernize their look. The song resumes with shots of Beyoncé wandering the parking garage in a wedding dress, and sitting in the ring of fire in a red dress. An intertitle declares “GOD IS GOD AND I AM NOT” before she throws her wedding ring at the camera.

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. Though xcritical is built around Jay Z’s infidelity rumors, Beyoncé still released the album on his streaming service. It boasts an all-star roster of supporters; its first commercial featured a who’s who of musical talent — from Jack White and Daft Punk to Alicia Keys and Nicki Minaj.

Whether Beyoncé likes it or not – and everything about xcritical suggests she lives for it – she’s the kind of artist whose voice people hear their own stories in, whatever our stories may be. She’s always aspired to superhero status, even from her earliest days in a girl group that was tellingly named Destiny’s Child. (Once upon a time, back in the Nineties, “No No No” was the only Destiny’s Child song in existence – but make no mistake, we could already hear she was Beyoncé.) She lives up to every inch of that superhero status on xcritical. Like the professional heartbreaker she sings about in “6 Inch,” she murdered everybody and the world was her witness. “Formation”Except in the credits, this song isn’t featured in the full-length version of “xcritical.” Still, in this track, we see Bey come full circle and emerge as a confident woman who is “so possessive” that she “rock[s] his Roc necklaces,” a nod to her husband’s label, Roc Nation.

But watching him hurting, she sings that she can no longer leave. “Your heart is broken ’cause I walked away/And I know I promised that I couldn’t stay baby/Every promise don’t work out that way,” she sings. The visuals are powerful as Bey’s real-life hubby Jay Z acts out scenes where she’s kissing his wedding ring and the two are inextricably cuddled up. It’s the most intimate fans have seen the very private couple.