Beyonce Serves Angry, Feminist, Political ‘Lemonade’

What exactly is Beyonce trying to say with “Lemonade,” the surprise album she has just released to the world? Has life given her lemons? Because this is one angry Beyonce. She’s seen taking a baseball bat down the streets of New Orleans, smashing car windows, driving a monster truck over a row of rusted cars, and taking a bat to a New Orleans Police Department surveillance camera.

The star dropped the 12-song offering on Tidal, the struggling streaming music service owned by her husband Jay Z and a bunch other stars. It also appeared in the form of a “visual album” on HBO.

Fans are buzzing about the lyrics and the messages, as Queen Bey serves up a medley of themes that include black nationalist feminism and infidelity. The 56-minute movie is part-music video, part-documentary — but the one overarching theme is that Jay Z seems to have done her wrong. “Are you cheating on me?” she wails at one point.

It’s personal. And she isn’t pleased.

The feminist images feature American Southern, Voodoo, and Afrofuturist utopian imagery, notes Billboard, with Beyonce getting political, pushing the Black Lives Matter message once again, as she did at the Super Bowl. It’s also about black women and black power.

“The most disrespected person in America is the black woman,” Malcolm X, in archival footage, says early in the film. The film features the mothers of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, two black men whose deaths prompted the launch of the anti-police Black Lives Matter movement. It’s Beyonce with her “middle-fingers-up mode,” says Rolling Stone.

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So what happened? Beyonce spent years seemingly happily wed to Jay Z. Remember when she used her full married name for her “Mrs. Carter Show” tour? President Obama touted her as a “role model” for young women.

And now? “Lemonade” moves through stages: intuition, denial, apathy, reformation, forgiveness, hope, redemption. The buzz is that one of the songs mentions “Becky with the good hair.” That’s said to be designer Rachel Roy, who has been the subject of rumors in the past in terms of a relationship with Jay Z, and who, over the weekend, posted a picture of herself on Instagram with the caption, “Good hair don’t care.”

Beyonce fans poured hate on her online. And some fans even got the Roy part wrong and started attacking celeb chef Rachael Ray — who had nothing to do with anything.

The cheating rumors have swirled since that security camera footage surfaced in May 2014, showing Solange Knowles, Beyonce’s sister, physically attacking Jay Z in an elevator while Beyonce stood by.

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Toward the end of this new docu-album, Beyonce seems to come around, saying, “Me and my baby gonna be all right, we gonna live a good life.” The visuals end with happy couples and Beyonce says,  “My torturer became my remedy. So we’re gonna heal. We’re gonna start again.”

Jay Z makes an appearance — and kisses Bey’s feet.

And, yes, actual lemonade is even shown — lemons and lots of sugar in an old-fashioned recipe for lemonade from Jay Z’s grandmother, Hattie, and home video footage of her 90th birthday, in which she says, “I was served lemons, but made lemonade.”

The question no one is asking is this: Would Beyonce really reveal such personal drama in a “visual album?” And why would Jay Z be part of it? Does this signal that they’re splitting? Are we to believe they’re happily moving on after this public shaming?

In the meantime, there’s Tidal. The Spotify-esque music streaming app has reportedly struggled since Jay Z bought it last year for $56 million. For Beyonce’s “Lemonade,” users could either stream the record by signing up for Tidal, or pay $17.99 to download it for offline listening.

Almost immediately, Tidal downloads surged.

Beyonce’s Formation World Tour kicks off in Miami April 27.