#Beyonce best thing i never had genius professional#
Severing professional ties with father and manager Mathew Knowles, Beyoncé eschewed the music of her previous releases in favor of an intimate, personal album. Her collaborations with songwriters and record producers The-Dream, Tricky Stewart and Shea Taylor produced a mellower tone, developing diverse vocal styles and influences from funk, hip hop, and soul music. Following a career hiatus that reignited her creativity, Beyoncé was inspired to create a record with a basis in traditional rhythm and blues that stood apart from contemporary popular music. It was released on June 24, 2011, by Parkwood Entertainment and Columbia Records. Know especially that at this time the potency and vulnerabilities of black lives in all its forms, for good and bad, are front and centre culturally.4 is the fourth studio album by American singer Beyoncé. Know too that every relationship has elements of this, that parts of their lives – individually and together – and parts of, say, her parents' lives, offer grist for thoughts on the nature of relationships. Know that we, the public and the media, love nothing more than the promise of confession and human failing from the great and good we have elevated. How about this theory instead? Beyonce and Jay Z know the rumours that the gossip mags have printed over the years about them. Would Beyonce put herself so completely exposed out there and then take whatever was said in Jay Z's "response" in a public forum? No more likely is it?
#Beyonce best thing i never had genius full#
Would Jay Z appear in a film such as Lemonade, full of anger and hurt and detail about a fractured relationship where the man is the clear and unequivocal bad guy, if that character in the songs really was him? Why? Atonement? Not likely is it? Is it really likely that they would, at the peak of their careers and financial strength, go blow-by-blow over their private life with us?
We've heard about their successes in songs, we've heard a little bit about setbacks (usually as precursors to more successes) but we've never heard real, raw personal exposure. Little to nothing gets out about them that isn't filtered through their lens and little to nothing is known about them that hasn't dropped as a publicity crumb from their table. While adept marketers, this couple are also seriously private and controlled. And it's a tricky argument to make, not least because it assumes that songwriters are not capable of taking elements of their lives and the lives of others – not to mention using that wacky thing called an imagination – and fashioning something different again from that which isn't real but is art. That of course begs the question that Lemonade is about Beyonce and Jay Z. So have they now moved to marketing their own experience with infidelity? She's the Texan kid who dragged herself and friends into prominence as strong independent women and then took control of every aspect of her life – from male management and label heads, from elders and from anyone else wanting a piece of that pie.
He's the street guy who did the industry mogul thing before Kanye West and made business his business. Marketing their music, certainly, but also marketing their brands above and beyond music so that the music comes within a broader package of assumptions.
Prepared for it.Īpart from their obvious musical attributes – and aside from the carping rock boys who yell "look at all the songwriting credits" and "she's a front with no guitar" there now is a wide realisation that Beyonce has developed into a substantial figure the equal of her already lauded husband – Beyonce and Jay Z are seriously adept at marketing. It's a fan loop, a media loop, a marketer's dream loop. Because that would fill more space discussing whether and when it will happen even before discussing what he says, or is perceived to be saying, on his next album. Not because it's necessarily true – we'll get to that in a minute – but because inevitably, we would be looking for a response from him. There should not be any surprise in the report that Jay Z's next album will be some kind of "response" record to Beyonce's infidelity-and-pride opus, Lemonade, which has been filling space in every media outlet and topping the charts everywhere in the past 11 days.