Wow.  Everyone is going to come at this from different angles.  I’ll touch on what struck the biggest chords with me.

Most artists (yours truly included) like to dance that line between what you definitely know about them, and what you think you know, but really can’t prove.  So when the short started, and a lot of the poetry and music was about a cheating man…sure I understood jumping to the conclusion, but mentally I was still fully into ‘this is what she wants us to think.’

Then, came, what was it? Track 3?  With the direct callback to ‘the hottest chick in the game wearing my chain?’ and the ‘God complex’, by the time we made it to the end you got Big Pimpin caressing ankles?!?

None of us can still ‘prove’ anything today that we didn’t know last night.  But…MAN.

Speaking of Track 3, when she broke out the Malcolm reference and cut to the clip of him chastising us because the black woman is the most disrespected and abused person on Earth…I’m very comfortable where I’m at in terms of ‘part of the solution or part of the problem?’  But still, it was enough to hit that Shame button and ask myself ‘Am I doing enough?’  And within the context of that song, not about me at all.

The past few days, a lot of us have been having the conversation of ‘we will always have pop stars, but who’s really going for it artistically?’  I’ve always appreciated Beyonce as a pop star, but these last couple of videos and live performances…I’m here for this evolution.  ‘Lemonade’ really, really works as a ‘visual album’. I don’t think I looked away the whole hour; my film geekness for the imagery mixed with the music was completely peaked.

If you haven’t gotten to it yet, carve out that hour before HBO takes it down.