![]() Everything Is Love certainly doesn’t have the musical expansiveness of Lemonade. The way Beyoncé’s vocal can suddenly lift out of the electronic monotone and into the ether at the end of phrases becomes a special effect in itself. A man who seems to have risen above rap’s customary ego plays, Jay-Z sounds genuinely comfortable in this setting, but it is Beyoncé who thrives. Production throughout (from a wide range of hip-hop beatmakers) is sleek, modern and dynamic but it takes a producer of Pharrell Williams's confidence to dare slather such a rich voice in effects reserved for more pedestrian singers. The result of using that remarkable voice both as back and foreground is to turn Jay-Z into a guest on Beyoncé’s album. John and Yoko were pretty good at tackling hot political issues, too. With its sharp references to police brutality, false arrest and the shooting of Trayvon Martin, it puts Beyoncé and Jay-Z at the forefront of Black Lives Matter. ![]() Only one track, the punchy Black Effect, sees the happy couple unlock their gazes from each other's eyes for long enough to address problems lesser mortals might face. But this being hip-hop, the way they tend to express affection is through brand names and lifestyle boasts (“Sittin’ dock of the bay with a big yacht / Sippin’ Yamakazi on the rocks”). Like John and Yoko, The Carters can be just a bit too pleased with their self-mythologised love. But it is hard to escape the sense of brand management too, as the emotional turmoil that infused those two earlier albums is queasily resolved in declarations of undying affection. Their relaxed interchanges are peppered with amusing pop culture references to Jay-Z’s awards snub(“Tell the Grammys f- that zero for eight s- / Have you ever seen the crowd goin' apes-?”), the couple's inclusion in Forbes rich list (Beyoncé: “My great-great-grandchildren already rich/ That's a lot of brown children on your Forbes list”) and their disputes with rival streaming services (Beyoncé: “My success can’t be quantified / If I gave two f- about streaming numbers, would’ve put Lemonade up on Spotify”). Nominated for eight Grammys (although it failed to win any) it was the most mature and philosophical album of his outstanding career and arguably one of the most grown-up albums ever heard in rap. Jay-Z, to his credit, responded last year with 4:44, a self-lacerating mea culpa that confessed his infidelity, examined his masculinity and pleaded for a second chance with the woman he loved. Mixing art and life by specifically addressing the very public rumours about the state of her union with Jay-Z, its bravura honesty brought out qualities of depth and focus in Beyoncé that had only been hinted at before. Announced during the final London show of their co-headlined stadium tour On The Run II and released exclusively via their streaming platform Tidal, it is effectively the third album in a soap-operatic series about the ups and downs of their relationship.īeyoncé's Lemonade fired the first shots across the bows in April 2016, a staggering pop masterpiece about marital discord and black womanhood. It is Beyoncé's voice that illuminates and lubricates Everything Is Love, the joint album that the powerhouse R’n’B diva and her rap mogul husband released without warning on Saturday. Well, she can sing a bit better than just about everyone. Mind you, Beyoncé can sing a bit better than Yoko. Given free reign of the Louvre, you’d hope the Carters would have had more adventurous taste.When did Beyoncé and Jay-Z become the John and Yoko of hip-hop? Pop’s reigning power couple have become so self-referential their oeuvre has become a public dissection, discussion and triumphalist vindication of their marriage. How much more compelling and challenging would it have been to see shots of Beyoncé and Jay-Z in the Pavillon des Sessions, where the Louvre lumps together artifacts from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Oceania? Or amid the Assyrian reliefs in its Department of Near Eastern Antiquities at a time when the Assyrian artistic heritage continues to be threatened in Iraq and Syria? It’s indisputably striking (and amazing) to see Beyoncé at the center of a line of dancers moving in perfect synchronicity beneath David’s “Coronation of Napoleon,” but it also seems like a pretty obvious pick. ![]() Rather than familiar examples of European painting and Greco-Roman statuary, why not pose more difficult questions about what’s in the coffers of European museums? The shots of Benoist’s “Portrait of a Black Woman” and those in which the couple flanks the Great Sphinx of Tanis begin to hint at such issues, but more could have done in this vein. Beyoncé and Jay-Z in front of the Great Sphinx of Tanisīut the video also represents something of a missed opportunity. ![]()
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