Review: Beyoncé releases new, real and relatable album

The world has been waiting for new music from Beyoncé, and now they have it as she delivers her sixth solo studio album “Lemonade.”

The rollout for the album was deluxe as Beyoncé took over HBO for an hour to premiere the visual album. Minutes after the visual album went off the TV, the audio album dropped on Tidal as a Tidal exclusive. As someone who hates to review an album less than a week after I hear it, I will only review the visual album.

The visual starts with the Queen in blonde braids and a fur. As it goes further you see more nature and old fashion southern images. The cinematography throughout the movie was very artsy and well done.

The movie depicts a woman dealing with the trauma of having her husband cheat. Throughout the movie, Queen Bey acts all the stages of dealing with adultery. The stages are: Intuition, Denial, Anger, Apathy, Emptiness, Accountability, Reformation, Forgiveness, Hope, and Redemption. As Beyoncé acts, the audio album scores each scene.

Beyoncé was not the only star in her movie, just the centerpiece, as stars like Serena Williams, Zendaya, Amandla Stenberg, and of course Jay Z all made cameos. Most notably, the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown both made appearances in a scene holding their late sons’ pictures.

“Lemonade” is heavily drenched in southern black culture. The outfits are mostly southern belle-like attire. Some of the nature scenes appear to be set at a New Orleans old-fashion plantation.

One of the big elements was the use of spoken word to tell the story even clearer. Every scene had a stage and spoken word poem before that set the scene for the song to play.

The meaning of the album and movie’s title, “Lemonade” comes to the front in a poem during the “Redemption” scene. “Take one pint of water, add half pound of sugar, the juice of eight lemons, the zest of half lemon, pour the water from one jug, then to the other several times, strain through a clean napkin. Grandmother, the alchemist. You spun gold out of this hard life. Conjured beauty from the things left behind. Found healing where it did not live. Discovered the antidote in your own kitchen. Broke the curse with your own two hands. You passed these instructions down to your daughter, who then passed it down to her daughter,” said Beyoncé.

My favorite scene was when Beyoncé suspected the cheated and jumped off the roof and landed in water. The water filled her house and to me it symbolized the bliss of ignorance and how she was drowning in that ignorance. How she opened the house and the water came out symbolized how she was letting the ignorance go.

Beyoncé’s new visual album confirms that she is the greatest entertainer in the world. There isn’t an artist alive who can put together the amazing experiences of entertainment that she has. From music, to choreography, to cinematography, Beyoncé has shown that the music entertainment industry is in her hands and she can squeeze and create “Lemonade.”