There’s something different about Beyoncé and her new single “Formation.”
It isn’t that her stranglehold over popular culture is dwindling. Bey still reigns supreme as the queen of self-marketing, utilizing her tried-and-true method of promotion — releasing music unannounced to the frantic delight of her fans — to maximize her influence right before the Super Bowl. It isn’t that her fiery single is lacking what makes her music so popular. There’s still a dirty dance beat, vocals meticulously edited to perfection and a chorus that is equal parts catchy and culturally relevant (the word “slay,” one of the most popular terms in youth culture, is repeated time after time). And it isn’t that Beyonce, known by many as “Queen B,” is changing her image from a gold-plated icon towering above her modern counterparts to a more gentle and toned-down one. Let’s be honest: Would it still be Beyoncé without that “I’m better than all of you and I know it” attitude?
What’s different is that this time around, the 34-year-old is aiming to play a new role: social activist, and an uncompromising and tenacious one at that. It’s a drastic change, and Beyoncé wastes no time cutting right to the chase in her “Formation” music video.
The video opens with the “Single Ladies” singer crouched over a New Orleans police car as it slowly submerges underwater. The car continues to sink, and with it, Beyoncé, until the floodwaters envelop them both — an allusion to the perception from some activists that the government was slow to provide assistance to the city because of its high minority population. Later, a hooded black child dances before a line of police officers in riot gear, with the phrase “Stop shooting us” graffitied on a wall next to him. Couple that with uncompromisingly pro-black lyrics (“My daddy Alabama, Momma Louisiana/ You mix that negro with that Creole make a Texas bama/ I like my baby hair with baby hair and afros/ I like my negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils”), and Beyoncé’s foray into socially conscious music becomes as subtle as she is humble.
But far from a trendsetting decision by Beyoncé, her newfound message reflects an already-occurring shift throughout much of modern music — and R&B and hip-hop in particular — toward addressing social and political issues.
The most obvious example of this is Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city and To Pimp A Butterfly, two albums that detail Lamar’s own personal experiences with institutional racism while growing up in Compton. At a time when the Black Lives Matter movement was gaining steam in response to the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police officers, Lamar’s album had the perfect message for the times. He has a laser focus on the issue of police brutality during “Alright” (“And we hate popo, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure, n—-“), raps about the insignificance of a lover’s skin color on Complexion (“Complexion don’t mean a thing [it’s a Zulu love]/Complexion [two-step]/ It all feels the same [it’s a Zulu love]”) and, with the aid of a two-decade-old recording, participates in an “interview” with Tupac about the state of racial inequality that, sadly, is just as relevant now as it was in the ’90s.
Other contemporary artists have focused on what many perceive as an increase in, or better awareness of, racial tensions in America. D’Angelo’s Black Messiah — declared a “protest album for the ages” by Mashable — came with a booklet released at the album’s release party explaining the album’s title, saying, “It’s about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt and in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough and decides to make change happen.” Shortly after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, J. Cole dropped his track “Be Free,” a song that encapsulates the downtrodden but resolute nature of many activists following Brown’s death (“Can you tell me why/ Everytime I step outside I see my n—– die?”). Alicia Keys released her song “We Gotta Pray” following the decision of a New York grand jury to not indict the officer involved in the death of Eric Garner.
“We will continue to be loud,” Keys said in an interview about the track with The New York Times. “I hope that this is our 21st-century civil rights movement. You shouldn’t be surprised if you see me out there.”
But the message spreads far beyond issues of racial injustice, touching on the topic of LGBT rights as well as the movement experiences an unprecedented flood of support in America. We all know the major pro-gay songs — with Macklemore’s “Same Love” and Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” standing among them — but there has been a mass proliferation of queer songs as the 21st century progresses.
Le1f, a rapper and producer from New York, takes pleasure in blurring the gender binary with his eccentric performance style and out-of-the-ordinary aesthetic. He even flipped the perception of what rap can be on its head, with The Daily Beast asking if his song “Wut” proved he was “too gay for hip-hop.” Rapper Angel Haze, a self-identified agender individual, documented their experiences growing up as a queer person in a cult in their 2013 album Dirty Gold, an album that viciously advocates for the right of self-expression.
You could argue that these artists are only able to touch on such contentious issues because there is an audience advocating for them to do so. It can’t be a coincidence that these songs all came out just as thousands of Americans included themselves in the Black Lives Matter movement and public consensus moved toward a pro-gay sentiment. The same could be said for the anti-war protest songs of the ’60s and ’70s, including “American Woman” by The Guess Who (“American woman/ Stay away from me”), as they profited off the growing public opposition to the Vietnam War.
There will always be revolutionary and forward-thinking artists who put out socially conscious music, but there won’t always be a pedestal for those controversial songs to stand upon. In other words, Beyoncé might have always been passionate about racial injustice, but only lately has there been enough demand to make singing about those issues a profitable venture.
Moving forward, new issues will arise and new types of music will gain popularity, but one thing will remain constant — the heart and soul of the people can always be found in the message and spirit of their music.
