Lemonade

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<b>100 Best Albums</b> There’s one moment critical to understanding the emotional and cultural heft of <i>Lemonade</i>, Beyoncé’s genre-obliterating blockbuster sixth album—and it arrives at the end of “Freedom,” a storming empowerment anthem that samples a civil-rights-era prison song and features Kendrick Lamar. An elderly woman’s voice cuts in: “I had my ups and down, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up,” she say. “I was served lemon, but I made lemonade.” The speech—made by her husband JAŸ-Z’s grandmother Hattie White on her 90th birthday in 2015—reportedly inspired the concept behind this radical project, which arrived with an accompanying film as well as words by Somali British poet Warsan Shire. Both the album and its visual companion are deeply tied to Beyoncé’s identity and narrative (her womanhood, her Blackne, her marriage) and make for her most outwardly revealing work to date. The detail, of course, are what make it so relatable, what make each song sting. The project is furiou, defiant, anguished, vulnerable, experimental, muscular, triumphant, humorou, and brave—a vivid personal statement, released without warning in a time of public scrutiny and private suffering. It is also astonishingly tough. Through tear, even Beyoncé has to summon her inner Beyoncé, roaring, “I’ma keep running ’cause a winner don’t quit on themselve.” This panoramic strength—lyrical, vocal, instrumental, and personal—nudged her public image from mere legend to something closer to real-life superhero. .

via Apple Music

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