What you need to know about Beyonce’s upcmong visual album, Black Is King
As she releases her latest visual album Black Is King, Beyonce’s career continues to grow. Here is how the Queen of Pop has done it – from Destiny’s Child to Coachella.
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A new Beyonce project has become less about setting streaming records and more about flexing her cultural influence as a creator and activist over the past decade.
While her early pop supremacy with Destiny’s Child celebrated girl power with Survivor and Independent Women, Queen Bey has broadened her musical commentary to explore marriage, motherhood, inequality and social injustice, most notably with 2016’s Lemonade album and 2018 headlining performance at the Coachella festival.
Her command of the Zeitgeist extends to disrupting the music marketing machine to drop new releases on short notice and the concept-driven “visual album”, both of which have become widely used by her pop peers. Beyonce is at the peak of her powers as she releases her latest project Black As King on Disney+ today.
GIRL POWER
After a couple of false starts in various girl group incarnations, Beyonce Giselle Knowles emerged as the central figure, both as a vocalist and performer, in Destiny’s Child when they exploded as a global pop phenomenon at the turn of the millennium.
Their brand of R&B female empowerment anthems took aim at the misogynistic portrayal of women as sexual objects or gold-diggers in hip-hop and celebrated women’s strength, resilience and independence.
Destiny’s Child entrenched Bootylicious into the popular vernacular with the Stevie Nicks-sampling smash which advanced body positivity, particularly among African-American women, with the song’s celebration of curves.
Nasty Girl was a sarcastic and slick commentary on shaming women for what they wear while Independent Women, which marked the group’s most successful era as a trio after line-up dramas during their early career, promoted the freedom from financial security.
QUEEN MOTHER
The gatekeepers of the pop industry have tried to exert control over female artists’ bodies and life choices for decades, asserting marriage and motherhood were deal-breakers for continued chart and touring success.
Beyonce proved them wrong. As she owned the stage at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards with her performance of Love On Top, Beyonce broke the internet when she unbuttoned her blazer and rubbed her belly to reveal she was pregnant with daughter Blue Ivy.
She set more social media records with her iconic Instagram post revelation she and husband Jay-Z were expecting twins Rumi and Sir and captivated the 2017 Grammys with her heavily pregnant performance of Love Drought and Sandcastles.
But Beyonce has also shared the reality of her experiences as a mother in her art, referencing postnatal depression on Mine from her self-titled fifth record, and her post-partum recovery after the emergency C-section birth of the twins in last year’s Homecoming documentary.
VISUAL ALBUM
The surprise visual album Lemonade was a seismic mic drop which reverberated around the world. While the lion’s share of attention was given to her husband’s infidelity and speculation about the identity of “Becky”, the album was much more than a public calling out of those who had done Bey wrong.
She launched the record with the complex black pride affirmation of Formation, centring her heritage and identity with the politically-charged song which ignited controversy when she performed as a guest of Coldplay’s Superbowl halftime concert in February 2016.
Beyonce and her dancers wore costumes which drew comparisons with the Black Panthers uniforms and law enforcement organisations accused the artist of being anti-police, which she denied.
The 65-minute Lemonade film also explored her emotional journey after her husband’s cheating in the racial context of slavery, the “generational curses” of her family and coming from a lineage of broken relationships, and black feminism by breaking down the stereotypical depictions of black women.
Lemonade also sought to celebrate African-American culture, in particular the traditions of the Deep South in the US.
She continued the history lesson with her “Beychella” moment in 2018. The historic concert at the Coachella festival in April 2018 was a tribute to the traditions of the “historically black colleges and universities” marching bands and majorette dancers.
The first African-American solo female solo artist to headline the globally famous festival — it was postponed for a year when she became pregnant with the twins — Queen Bey also incorporated themes of ancient black Greek culture with the costuming and choreography. The Homecoming concert film, which featured the long-awaited Destiny’s Child reunion and a jaw-dropping cameo from her sister Solange, aired on Netflix to millions around the world.
BLACK IS KING
Like all Beyonce projects, information about the project has been drip-fed by the artist herself, culminating with an 82-second trailer released two weeks ago.
Black Is King is a visual companion to the 2019 album The Lion King: The Gift, which was a soundtrack curated by Beyonce inspired by the Lion King remake in which she voiced Nala.
The cast of the “visual album” includes her husband, her mother Tina Knowles-Lawson, her daughter Blue Ivy, Kelly Rowland, Pharrell Williams, Naomi Campbell, Lupita Nyong’o and South Sudanese-born, Australian-raised model Adut Akech.
Black Is King started filming in New York, then Los Angeles, South Africa, West Africa, London and Belgium. Beyonce assembled a vast collective of collaborators including Dutch-Ghanaian filmmaker Emmanuel Adjei, Ghanaian pop star Blitz Bazawule and Belgian visual artist Pierre Debusschere.
In a candid Instagram post to announce the film, Beyonce wrote “it is my passion project that I have been filming, researching and editing day and night for the past year”. “I wanted to present elements of black history and African tradition, with a modern twist and a universal message, and what it truly means to find your self-identity and build a legacy,” Beyonce wrote on Instagram.
“I spent a lot of time exploring and absorbing the lessons of past generations and the rich history of different African customs.”
The artist, who has been a vocal campaigner for justice for black victims of police brutality including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, told fans the “events of 2020”, including the Black Lives Matter movement for equality “have made the film’s vision and message more relevant, as people across the world embark on a historic journey.”
Black Is King will premiere on Disney+ from 5pm on Friday.
Originally published as What you need to know about Beyonce’s upcmong visual album, Black Is King