Within 48 hours since its surprise release on HBO last Saturday night, Beyonce’s 12-track “visual album” Lemonade raked in an impressive 4.1 million tweets.
And it’s no wonder. The fanfare surrounding the US singer’s sixth album, now available on Tidal and iTunes, has set new standards for pop music that are hard to top.
But that’s not the only reason.
In just over an hour, the 34-year-old takes viewers through 11 emotional chapters, like Intuition, Denial, Anger and Hope, that mirror stages of grief while addressing real issues such as love and infidelity, the fight for freedom for black women, race and empowerment.
Featuring cameos from the likes of US tennis star Serena Williams, US singer-actress Zendaya, Beyonce’s US rapper-husband Jay Z (real name Shawn Carter), their four-year-old daughter Blue Ivy, and her parents, Beyonce crafts an emotional and compelling narrative with the music and spoken word poetry by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire.
The pop star has been tight-lipped about her private life, choosing to shy away from media interviews, but the intriguing Lemonade seems to hold answers for all the things she has left unsaid.
We sift through the clues in Lemonade to answer these burning questions.
DID JAY Z CHEAT?
When rumours of her husband’s infidelity surfaced in 2014, Queen Bey’s lips were sealed.
This was after that elevator incident. You know, the one where her sister Solange was seen on leaked CCTV footage wildly attacking Jay Z in a hotel elevator.
It gave birth to the infamous lyric “Of course sometimes s*** go down when there’s a billion dollars on an elevator” from her 2013 song Flawless, but that was as much as Beyonce had let slip.
Now, she is dropping not-so-subtle hints about Jay Z’s cheating. The most controversial lyric is from her new track Sorry, which references a certain “Becky with the good hair”.
Fans wasted no time linking it to US fashion designer Rachel Roy, the ex-wife of Jay Z’s former business partner Damon Dash.
True or otherwise, Roy, 42, certainly didn’t help her case when she posted “Good hair don’t care, but we will take good lighting, for selfies, or self truths, always. live in the light #nodramaqueens” on Instagram alongside a since-deleted photo.
DID BEYONCE ADDRESS HER LITTLE-KNOWN MISCARRIAGE AGAIN?
In a chapter called Apathy, Beyonce reads spoken word poetry with the lines: “So what are you gonna say at my funeral now that you’ve killed me? Here lies the body of the love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother of my children both living and dead.”
Many assumed this segment refers to a miscarriage before she gave birth to her only child Blue Ivy in 2012.
Previously, Beyonce had spoken of the episode only in her 2013 HBO documentary Life Is But A Dream, where she called it “the saddest thing” she had ever been through.
WHAT DOES BEYONCE THINK OF HER FATHER?
In her country track Daddy Lessons, she seems to draw a parallel between her father and former manager Mathew Knowles’ cheating ways and supposedly that of Jay Z’s.
The lyrics – “Cause when trouble comes in town/And men like me come around/Oh, my daddy said shoot” – appear particularly telling.
Beyonce’s parents divorced in 2011 after 31 years of marriage, when his infidelity came to light.
The video accompanying Daddy Lessons also shows Knowles playing with Blue Ivy, quashing rumours that he never met his own granddaughter.
IS LEMONADE THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE POWER COUPLE?
I think it’s safe to say that the talented twosome are here to stay – for now.
In the later chapters of Lemonade, Beyonce tells of a journey towards redemption and hope.
The last one, aptly named Redemption, portrays happy times in the Carter household.
Snippets of home videos are included, including moments from the couple’s lavish wedding, Blue Ivy’s birthday party, Beyonce’s pregnancy and father-daughter bonding on the football pitch.
ashikinr@sph.com.sg
This article was first published on April 27, 2016.
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