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Thursday, April 28, 2016
Art & Style
Beyonce gives us an interesting message from her new album “Lemonade.”
KAI BOOKER
The Gramblinite
All Hail Queen Bey! With
her second visual album, singer
Beyonce´Knowles-Carter has
slayed us all once again.
On April 23, at 10 P.M. the
34-year-old Houston, Texas native debuted her sixth album,
Lemonade, after the one hour
long video that was more like a
small film was aired on HBO.
The album is a collection of
emotions swimming in accusations of infidelity, and wrapped
in feminism as well as black
women’s empowerment. The
visual artistry in “Lemonade”
is a depiction of the psyche of
“the most disrespected and the
most unappreciated person in
the world”, the black woman.
“You can taste the dishonesty, it’s all over your breath”
these words are the first of
many stabs at the rumors of
her husband, Shawn “Jay-Z”
Carter”s infidelity.
In the painfully too familiar
ballad, “Pray You Catch Me”,
Bey describes her ‘intuition’
and how she “prays to catch
him whispering and prays he
catches her listening” so she
does not have to wonder if her
husband is cheating, her every
word dripping with desperation. The visual adaptation sets
us in tall grass as if to obscure
the view of what is actually
happening right in front of the
naked eye; this is also the only
display of the songstress alone
in the mini movie.
Tying the album together
were the poems of Warsan
Shire, a 27-year-old SomaliBritish poet. Shire’s poetry
caught Beyonce´s eye with it’s
destructively, beautiful content
on womanhood and the immigrant experience.
The poems featured on this
album are from Shire’s Warsan
Versus Melancholy: The Seven
Stages of Being Lonely. Denial
and frustration come in the form
of a baseball bat and a monster
truck as the queen practices her
swing and throws a subliminal
at masculinity as she violently
crushes American muscle cars.
She channels novelist Toni
Morrison with her “unwilling-
File photo
ness to privilege white people”
as the very few Caucasians seen
in the background are really not
seen at all. She also terms “You
better call Becky with the good
hair” which blatantly and unapologetically refers to a white
woman and questions their true
intentions with lines like “Let’s
imagine for a moment that
you…. never had the baddest
woman up in the game in your
sheets, would they be down to
ride?”, in the second song on
the album, “Hold Up”.
“Don’t Hurt Yourself “ outlines the cycle of pain informing
a man that when he hurts his
woman he is inadvertently hurting himself “When you play
me, you play yourself. Don’t
play yourself.” She continues
on her bat of anger consistently
asking “Who the f*** do you
think I is?”.
Apathy depicted in “Sorry”
which a funky, upbeat song letting men know women are not
thinking about you after you
hurt them, they’re concern is
preserving themselves and the
children ‘sorry not sorry’.
Searching for reasons to
stay but finding more reasons
to leave brought the visual to
emptiness in a twenties, jazzrock collaboration entitled “6
Inch” with The Weekend.
The chilling, realization in
“Daddy Lessons” comes like a
cool breeze of epiphany as she
reaches accountability. Dancing
to the coolest country-blues song
of 2016 she forced the world to
confront the generational mistreatment of women. In an effort of reformation she declares
“you’re my lifeline and you’re
trying to kill me” as she tries to
put band aids over her wounds.
But her velvety chorus entrances
listeners in an air of hopefulness.
“We build sandcastles that
washed away. I made you cry
as I walked away.” She croons
pleading with herself and declaring to her trespassers ‘I
forgive you’. “ And although
I promised that I couldn’t stay
baby. Every promise, don’t
work out that way.”
“Forward” is just as it reads.
In the adaptation, her “resurrection” is the product of a
cleansing by a Native American, dressed in ritual attire. With
new found self affirmation, Bey
teams up with Kendrick Lamar
to make a powerful fight song!
A song for women like Sybrina
Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother also featured in “Lemonade”.
“All Night” gives us a
glimpse into a hopeful future
“They say true love is the greatest weapon to win the war
caused by pain.” Redemption
is the last stage in this gift to
women of color everywhere.
“Lemonade is about the
love that black women havethe love that threatens to kill
us, makes us crazy and makes
us stronger than we should ever
have to be,” said Ijeoma Olu,
The Guardian.
CONTACT: [email protected]
‘Keanu’ the movie
JADE BOYKINS
The Gramblinite
The hilarious duo, KeeganMitchell Key and Jordan Peele
are at it yet again with their new
movie that will be in theaters,
called, Keanu. They both agree
that it is the ultimate action
movie, something that would
usually star DeWayne “The
Rock” Johnson and Van Diesel.
After five seasons of their
Key & Peele sketches on Comedy Central, the duo set their
sights on Hollywood with
Keanu. The film was written
by Jordan Peele himself and
Alex Rubens with director Peter Atencio and distributed by
Wardner Bros.
It’s amount two nerds, Rell
(Peele) who was dumped by
his girlfriend and finds happiness when a kitten is found
on his doorstep. After a thief
steals the kitten, Rell asks his
cousin, Clarence (Mitchel Key)
to help find the kitten.
“It’s no accident that a kitten would be the key piece and
also there’s a certain strategy
to calling the kitten Keanu because that name is iconic. So
when you think of the name
Keanu you’ll think of two
names instead of one.”
“The most important thing
for us to make sure that the
material has never been seen
before. We’re draw