We’ve all had a bit of time to prepare ourselves for Lemonade, Beyoncé’s new sort-of-but-not-really surprise album. Released to coincide with her HBO special of same name, this event was first foretold by the release of ‘Formation’ in February, shortly before her blistering appearance at the Super Bowl, during which she roundly upstaged Coldplay (which, in fairness, is tantamount to beating a slug in an arm wrestle) and horrified many white middle Americans who had yet to notice that she is actually black.
Lemonade follows the same ethos demonstrated in that first track, and places black activism front and centre. You could argue back and forth for days about how significant it is for someone like Beyoncé to release an album like this, and feel free to, but speaking in musical terms, I’d say the album is pretty excellent, despite being released solely on the Jay Z Self Indulgence Transmitter (Tidal, to use its proper name).
As with The Life of Pablo, the highlight of the whole affair is the track with Kendrick Lamar on it. The key differences are thus – Madlib didn’t produce this one, more’s the pity (although Jonny Coffer and Just Blaze did a damn good job), and Kendrick has never appeared on a Beyoncé cut before, or vice versa. The track, ‘Freedom’, is exactly as the title suggests, an earthshaking rallying cry which sees Beyoncé drawing parallels between slavery and the modern system of oppression, violence and mass incarceration. K Dot, meanwhile, reflects on the same ideas and ponders on the need for figures like Beyoncé and himself to be known as much as activists as artists, maybe even more.
It ends with a sample of a crowd applauding, which you could be forgiven for thinking is a tad self-congratulatory, until the applause ends and Hattie White starts speaking. White is Jay Z’s grandmother, and the audio is from her 90th birthday party, which took place last April. In the sampled speech, she speaks on her struggle, and plays on the ‘If life gives you lemons’ adage, drawing parallels with Beyoncé’s own grandmother, and clarifying the namesake of the album.
Powerful stuff, and a monster of a tune. Other featured artists include James Blake, The Weeknd and Jack White, who also produced the magnificently sweary ‘Don’t Hurt Yourself’. Writing credits also include Father John Misty, Karen O, MeLo-X and Ezra Koenig. You can see the full list of album credits here. Archivist, ethnomusicologist and oral historian Alex Lomax also gets a writing nod on ‘Freedom’ because two of his field recordings are sampled.
UPDATE NOTE: This article previously stated that the Hattie White sampled in ‘Freedom’ was Hattie Mae White, the first African American in Texas to be voted into public office since the post-abolition Reconstruction Era. This has since been corrected.
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