Losing sleep?
In permanent psychosis since Saturday afternoon, Feb 6, 2016?
Writing a blog post after you promised yourself you are done with creative writing?
Maybe life on earth is ending, and an asteroid is about to hit us all. Or maybe Queen B is back, bitch. By popular demand. With “Formation”.
A while back I decided to ride or die for Beyoncé. An attempt to rewrite history, the shame of not speaking up, or screaming up, for Michael when he was being eaten alive. For being a zombie like everyone else.
Pondering what Beyoncé was gonna do next I thought: “Well, it’s gonna be good, something feminist, for the girls. Something to dance to. Something to show off her voice.” It seemed that after the planet-stopping 2013 album drop there could be no more surprises of the same magnitude.
And then she released “Formation”. Zero marketing again. And you better believe 24 hours from its release, on the stage of the Super Bowl, more properly called the Beyoncé Bowl, everyone will know the lyrics by heart, and the choreography.
First impressions?
I can’t even. It’s evolutionary shit. Next level. No words. Just energy.
I know that instantly the lyrics will be slapped onto motivation posters, mugs, T-shirts and bleeding skin before she performs it live. Beyoncé is political as fuck! She’s funny as fuck. She’s serious as fuck, with clear allusions to war, slavery, resistance. It’s something else. A black celebrity of her stature finally addressing the elephant in the room – race in the US of A. Black Lives Matter. There is nothing to compare this video to in terms of message. It’s a game-changer. Anything I say about it will be corny. Cuz when next level shit happens, you don’t know how to talk about it yet. You just dance, cry and fall apart in the best way.
Parental advisory greets me but then Beyoncé is the picture of modesty – tamed hair in a neat bun, dress covering her up with a high neck, long sleeves and hem. Is she succumbing to the pressures of the YouTube comment section, telling her to “get dressed” and be a “respectable” mother? Well, you tell me, cuz this bad bitch is on top of a police car squatting down in the least feminine position possible, as the voice of a slayed New Orleans rapper-comedian Messy Mya is asking a question:
“What happened after New Orleans?”
The music starts, pictures of the troubled sunshine-drowning South glide by. Street dancers, church services, flooded city. Ghetto fabulous girls, wigs, masquerades, dreams.
Beyoncé is talking back to the comment section of every social media out there, without engaging – “I did not come to play with you hoes”. Folks say she is where she is because she signed a deal with the devil (or a covert organization that doesn’t exist). I guess it’s easier to survive the reality of one’s own inadequacy, slowly farting your life away into the sofa, if you believe that another human being can slay like B does – achieved with hard work and dedication. She is pointing to that elusive Objective Reality by dancing in a gym with other superhuman creatures, zero body fat and bulging muscle. She also has pretty simple instructions for anyone who wants to follow in her footsteps:
“I see it, I want it
I stunt, yeah, little hornet
I dream it, I work hard
I grind 'til I own it.”
Slayed.
People from the comment section told her to brush her daughter’s hair (with accusations of bad parenting in the air, of course). Beyoncé lets Blue’s natural awesomeness run wild. Not only that – she puts the same Afro on every single one of her dancers too.
Slayed.
Beyoncé (among other female performers, their achievements systematically undermined when their anatomy comes up) has always been called a whore. The level of her demonization reached vertigo-inducing heights lately with a “feminist” protesting Beyoncé’s rumored participation in a black history movie project, on grounds of, wait for it, lacking human dignity.
Let me take a breather, please.
And digress a little. Or actually do the opposite – get to the fucking point.
Let’s look at this outstanding hypocrisy. Anyone who has ever been to the ballet can vouch for this simple piece of objectivism – professional dance attire such as the leotard (designed to provide maximum freedom of movement to dancers) is not a great way to mask genitalia – both female and male. Put bluntly, when you are at the ballet, you can see the dancers’ shit. Like all of it.
Now let’s ask:
How many times have you seen a male ballet dancer being called a whore in the media?
How many times have you seen a female ballet dancer being called a whore in the media?
So let’s make this clear, this is where this “opinion” stands: if you are a white woman wearing professional dancing attire called a leotard and you dance to the music of dead European composers – you are called a ballerina, you make art, and everyone respects you. Right? Right.
If you are a black woman, of normal weight, wearing exactly the same type of professional dancing attire but dancing to contemporary music featuring urban topics – you are a whore, you gained everything you have cuz you have an ass and dress skimpily. Right? Right.
Enough of that mess. In “Formation” Beyoncé sports looks where she is completely covered up – and yet she is as lit and smoking as ever. How can you cover up the energy that this woman is? You can’t. And why would you? People saying she is where she is because she undresses a lot can be dismissed. No longer overshadowed by her form, her essence is shining through, her intelligence in pop music unparalleled. She is not having any of this modern day witch hunt mess. When dancing in a corridor of a lavishly decorated Southern home she is lady in the parlor on top and the concert version of the Beyoncé we know so well on the bottom. Her message may go something like this: if you are hungry, eat a dick.
Slayed.
Her songs were often criticized for being generic and aiming to please the widest audience possible. “Formation” answers back: everyone in the music video is black. In her shows and videos Beyoncé has always had dancers of all ethnicities. This is different, a conscious decision. Everyone (but the police officers, who are lined up, uniform, dystopian, devoid of humanity) is African American. How’s that for populist?
Slayed.
There’s also always been noise about Beyoncé trying to be white. This she dismisses powerfully with the jaw-dropping: “I like my baby hair, with baby hair and afros. I like my Negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils.” And instantly you get voices in your head about nose job accusations, and the meaning of “Jackson Five nostrils”. Already there are haters calling her “hypocritical”, as if she is not aware of the rumors about her own enhancements or that she has never met the post-surgery Michael, or known about her mental health struggles. Even this line alone contains a universe of endless controversial meanings that bring up abuse, trauma, distortion, metamorphosis – so many of them that some artists can’t conjure up in their whole careers.
Slayed.
She is also using the n-word in a way completely different from other shit on the radio or in entertainment. Even the n-word has been appropriated and slowly becoming devoid of meaning in pop culture at this point. A very complicated issue, and not possible to cover here, but her use of it makes it impossible for the white kids to use in a cool nonchalant way (as they increasingly do). Beyoncé’s n-word is old, historical, equally beautiful and ugly. What’s more, she owns it.
Slayed.
And, if you don’t get just how serious she is from the metaphors, then there is the writing on the wall – and it ain’t a prayer (remember how whenever another black child dies in the street the community is told to pray and be patient), it’s a command:
“Stop shooting us.”
Allusions to fierceness and power continue with Beyonce’s braids that are actual whips (she makes it clear by twirling one around her perfectly manicured fingers – on her haters, of course). And unlike the weapon slave owners used she doesn’t need to have it on hand and pick it up to strike – it’s part of her actual body. She is enough of a threat as she is.
Slayed.
Beyoncé getting political at this point in time is no coincidence. There is a neo Nazi running for office with nothing but fart air in between his ears, and that’s no longer funny (if it ever was). Not taking this stuff seriously? She is fed up with it. She got the power, the audience, and a real agenda. She is going to take advantage of that. And she is making it clear to everyone that she wants to see action not bluffing or talking: “Prove to me you got some coordination. Slay trick, or you get eliminated.”
Slayed.
If you told a slave owner back in the day, in the deep South, running free in his mania to dominate, a person who’d just had sex with a black child, say a girl five years of age (child sexual abuse was part of the furniture), who does not even regard that child as human, treating it as a piece of meat to be played with until the sexual attraction wears off and later on – only as good as the free work she does, that in the 21 century, there would be a black family running the White House, entertainment would be dominated by black talent and black management (“I might get your song played on the radio station”), and there would be a black woman capable of stopping the Internet with “just” a song – they’d probably collapse from shock.
What African American community has achieved is nothing short of superhuman. That’s one example of the incredible human potential realized, the highs that we all can reach, if we try.
Slayed.
The song is riddled with puns and ambiguous lyrics. The word “slay” is repeated throughout. It seems to be saying – you may slay us (in the meaning of “murder”), but we will continue to slay (in the meaning of “excel”). When spoken, the motif of the song “Okay, okay, ladies, now let's get in formation” may also sound like “Okay, okay, ladies, now let's get information”. So Yonce is not just talking about organized, coordinated movement but also about education, reality, truth – all of it.
With her type of able pipes she could be singing complicated vocal gymnastics ballads in tight dresses with a wind machine in her face – for the rest of her life. Yet she is creating complex texts and doesn’t even give a fuck about her *precious* voice – she barely sings on this single. The irony of this woman being actually Ego-less when she is constantly being accused of being and Ego-maniac is painful. At this moment in time, there are things that are important to say out loud so they can be dealt with in the light of consciousness, and she says them in a unique way. She does half-sing one of the amazing one-liners in her silky voice:
“I might just be a black Bill Gates in the making.”
Slayed.
And what about the place of Man in Beyoncéuniverse, you ask? Here is a taste:
“When he fuck me good I take his ass to Red Lobster, cause I slay.
If he hit it right, I might take him on a flight on my chopper, cause I slay.
Drop him off at the mall, let him buy some J's, let him shop up, cause I slay.”
And this isn’t just a generic male we are talking about here. It’s Jay Z, y’all (cuz Beyoncé mentions Roc necklaces in the beginning). The guys in the video are all eye candy, by her side, but in the background. And she doesn’t even give a fuck if she appears to be alienating men or not, if anyone is gonna call her anything because of what she is saying. Real men will only marvel at this shit. The rest she doesn’t care for.
Slayed.
Before signing off, Beyoncé gives some good advice: “Always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper.” Her last words are profound not only in their multi layering but also due to the accompanying imagery.
The message clearly has to do with slavery – don’t go eye for an eye with racists; your best revenge is the fact that you came out of that incredible misery when you were paid zero for the hardest jobs – now no one can afford your services, except for crème de la crème events like the Grammies or the Super Bowl. And it also has to do with her stance as a feminist: no matter how many times she is slut-shamed by the brain-free haters, at the end of the day she is the one laughing all the way to the bank.
That message of (peaceful) revenge with your paycheck is challenged by the imagery of Beyoncé descending underwater on the police car, like a submarine. What’s more war-like than this imagery? She is going underwater, underground, to grow a new fin or a tail, to prepare for battle, and when she chooses the right moment, she will strike again. And you will not be suspecting. Again. But even when she is not there, she will be in everyone’s consciousness: “You know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation.”
Slayed.
And let me quickly address the fact that Beyoncé is talking back in the words of Messy Mya, a brutally murdered next-big-thing artist out of New Orleans. She gives someone who was supposed to be silent a long time ago a voice, saying – we will prevail. In one of Messy Mya’s YouTube videos the phone rings in the background; and the ringtone is Bonny and Clyde by Jay Z and Beyoncé. Clearly, he was a fan. And now not only Beyoncé is a fan, but many more will become that, thanks to “Formation”.
Slayed.
In this video, she poses problems, and points to solutions, something very rare artists do. In an era where so many kids of all backgrounds mindlessly consume black culture (including my daughter, who I try to educate appropriately, and not be a mimicker), Beyoncé is making a video with an emphasis on History, on Truth, on Actual Fucking Urgent Pressing Matters. My heart sank this January when there was almost no vines dedicated to Martin Luther King on Vine, a place largely made popular by black kids and young people. What the fuck happened? I felt like a little fluffy white kitten died in my soul and its decomposing body was poisoning every part of me. I guess Beyoncé notices cuz she aint fucking around about the subject. There are all generations of blackness in the video, and one senior citizen, old enough to have witnessed history, is holding up a newspaper called “The Truth” with the face of Dr. King on it.
But Beyoncé ain’t “Hooray Hooray civil rights are back” simple about it ether. She complicates things by the Super Bowl performance where she stands up for the Black Lives Matter movement with imagery of Black Panthers and homage to Malcolm X. It ain’t all peace. She embraces both. MLK and Malcolm X, two sides of the same stick. Two different ways. Two solutions to the same problem. Is she saying that all measures are good in this, dare I say, war? Whatever it is, she is ready for it.
There is nothing like this Beyoncé out there. She cannot be compared to anything or anyone contemporary to her. And the “Formation” video is so complex and layered, (from the uncontrollable laughs Messy Mya engenders to the tragic societal leveling in the States – where it doesn’t matter if you come from black aristocracy or the ghetto – you are black, period) that it almost rivals the complexity of human condition, of human form. It’s as if she is saying: “I’m not a cardboard box with a label on it that you can put on a shelf. I am strong, sexy, powerful, threatening, funny, spiritual, maternal – all of those things. I am also superhuman. I have also taken a lid of my consciousness, and evolved. But I know how to play this game of fame too.”
(I feel it’s also reflective of the postmodern dismantling of labels – it’s one thing to be black; it’s another to be black and a woman; black and a gay woman; black and a gender neutral person; black and a gender neutral person in the motherfucking ghetto, with purple hair, running around spitting Truth at people in the streets.)
The scene where she sits on the sofa surrounded by other ladies is filled with Zen-like fierceness and calm that needs no explanation or defending. She is simply stating facts:
“I go off, I go hard, get what’s mind, I’m a star”.
That’s not her version of events. That’s objective reality, the one that evades us more often than not in the political correctness Neverland of fake smiles and nodding yes-people, of safe spaces, where all the bad comments are carefully deleted to create an illusion of uniformity and peace, of forums where people who try to point to Reality get irrevocably banned.
Beyoncé cracked the code.
I think this video is so compelling strange and trance-like it can only be linked to MJ’s Black or White, in its entirety, with an innocent and inconspicuous, bright-colored main video, and divisive, suggestive, aggressive and dark crotch-grabbing, vehicle-exploding and window-smashing ending. What is happening to Beyoncé in the comment sections is exactly the same thing that was happening to Whitney and Michael in the tabloids. The process of destruction is so slow; the dismantling of greatness so subtle, no one notices it as it happens. Then of course there are deaths, and tributes, and big name celebs start saying in every award speech how they began doing music because of these legends.
Beyoncé is not having any of it. She is not gonna explain the importance of a vegan diet to the survival of the dying earth to anyone. She fucking tried, y’all. What else can you do? She’s just gonna go down underwater for another evolution session, and try again. And again. In a sense, her fans don’t even need to wage wars for her on the comment battle fields. Anyone with any sense in them can see what she is now, and the type of intelligence she has to pack convoluted, controversial but much necessary imagery and messages in just a few minutes of screen time. If anything, Beyoncé is underrated, distorted, misunderstood. But she is clearly cooking up some shit that’s about to set the record straight.
Her latest video is a reminder about the devastation, suffering and resistance that the human form intrinsically entails. It’s a call for staring the Truth right in the face. And it’s also a beautiful living, breathing, dancing monument to something that evades so many of us in these strange difficult times – hope.
Hope that no matter how many black children die in the streets, there will be a boy in a hoody dancing in front of a police line.
Hope that no matter how many black legends are slayed, dismantled off their thrones, and eaten alive, there is an angel in a white dress, baby hair and messy Afro intact, confident at age five, called Blue, staring down the camera as if she owns it, ready to accept the passing of the baton.
This is a piece of African American culture on par with masterpieces by Angelou, Morrison, Simone and Jackson that is gonna keep a lot of people around the world alive, in their darkest hour.
I think I’m gonna sleep well tonight.
Not all is lost.
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