All Hail the King

I don’t purchase music often.  Mainly it’s because 90% of the stuff on the radio is noise to my o’head ears.  Every now and then, a friend will recommend something and I’ll try it out, but this is not a normal occurrence.  I guess that’s how it is when you get older, but I don’t feel like I’m missing much.  I’ve never purchased an album without hearing a few singles, and with the way music is sold now, you really don’t have to purchase entire albums anymore.  That’s both a good thing and a bad thing, but I digress.

I was never a true Bey fan; I bought Dangerously in Love, but avoided the rest of her albums because they all sounded the same.  I do have some of her songs on my mp3, but that don’t change the fact that they’re similar in style and content.  I’ve always respected her work ethic and the fact that she had the damn sense to not tangle with a fuckton of different men like say, Taylor Swift.  The only man I personally have ever heard of Bey associating with (except for her father) is her husband, Shawn.  I have always appreciated that aspect of her life and career.  Sistahs got it hard enough without all that bullshit.

Then Beyoncé Knowles-Carter dropped a silent eponymous nuke on the world and within a week, she’d sold almost a million copies with absolutely no promotion.  That’s what you’d call a game-changer.  I was so impressed that I went to iTunes and gave that woman every dime she asked for.  And I’m glad I did.  I haven’t listened to anything else for the past couple of weeks.  The album has 14 cuts and 17 videos.  It is a tour de force; a grown woman’s album.  It is so vastly different from 4 and her other previous efforts that I feel that it can’t—and shouldn’t—be compared to them.  She’s a wife and mother, and that has changed her perspective, and thus, her music.  Bey is all the way live, all the way grown, and all the way independent.  I love it.  I’m so proud of her.  She can count me as a fan.

I enjoyed the entire album and it was difficult narrowing my faves down to five. 

1.  “Blow” 

It’s got this whole 80’s roller-skating thing going on and I LOVE IT!  Makes me wanna head out to the rink and lace up my skates.

Can you taste the Skittles/ it’s the sweetest in the middle/Pink is the flavor/solve the riddle

2.  “Rocket”

I may have gotten pregnant listening to this song.  It gives you the same vibe as D’Angelo’s “Untitled,” but I think it’s way better.

Let me sit this aaaaasssss on ya 

3.  “Superpower” 

This song makes me do everything in slow motion.  DAT BASS!!!

And I thought the world would revolve/without us/When nothing I know/couldn’t slow us down

4.  “Partition” 

This cut will go OFF in the club.  It’s a pole-dancing jam.  ‘Nuff said.

Driver roll up the partition please/I don’t need you seein’ Yoncé on her knees

5.  “Drunk in Love”   

This was blowing up the radio stations when I was home.  My eight-year-old niece was singing this shit…and not knowing what the hell she was singing about.  I gotta admit, Jay’s verse on this track could have been a lot better.

We woke up the next morning wonderin’ how in the hell did this shit happen oh baby

The videos are great; the production is top-shelf and Bey’s front and center, as she should be.  My favorite video is “Haunted,” and that should be of no surprise to fans of the Dark.  Then there’s “Blow,” “Partition,” and “Superpower.”  “Ghost” is also very well done, and “Yoncé” made a sistah want to drop it low.

Good job, Beyoncé.  Well done.  After 2013, which consisted of a 90+ city sold-out world tour and an album with a video for every song plus bonus vids, you deserve to sit at home with your husband and child and do absolutely nothing for three years while every other pop female scrambles to figure out how to resurrect their scalps and careers.  They’re going to need to look in the mirror and rethink their lives after this shit.  You changed the game.

At any rate, I have to take my hat off and give Mrs. Carter some shine.  All hail King Bey.  She DID THAT with this new album.  Four stars.  Get yours and get your life.  And with that, I’ll end it with this:

“Driver roll up the partition please…”