Beyoncé Calls Out Jay Z’s Cheating in ‘Lemonade,’ A Celebration of Black Girl Magic

“Apathy” opens on some truly bomb spoken word, as Bey honey-croons “so what are you gonna say at my funeral now that you’ve killed me? Here lies the body of the love of my life whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother of my children both living and dead. Rest in peace my true love, who I took for granted. Most bomb pussy, who because of me sleep evaded. Her shroud is loneliness, her god was listening. Her heaven will be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks.” If using biblical verses to call out your husband’s side hoe is wrong, then who would ever want to be right?

Serena Williams joins the party for a good old-fashioned girls rule, boys drool banger. F-rom women in tribal paint on a school bus to ladies in decadent Southern dresses, Beyoncé is accompanied by crews of beautiful black women everywhe-re she goes, helping her deliver zingers like “suck on my balls,” “put my deuces up,” “middle fingers up,” and “tell him ‘boy bye.’” “Apathy” also features one very concrete clue, a la Drake’s iconic “Courtney f-rom Hooters on Peachtree” reference: for Beyoncé, it’s the incredibly shade-laden line “he better call Becky with the good hair.” Sorry, Becky, but your life is in the Beyhive’s hands now.

In “Emptiness” and “Loss,” we plunge deeper into Beyoncé’s sadness and anger. Decadent Southern interiors turn red and light on fire as the house she has built literally crumbles. Between the club banger beats and intricate white-collared corsets, it’s easy to get distracted f-rom what we’re really watching here: the decimation of a marriage. Behind all the middle fingers and posturing, there’s a sense of witnessing, and an intimacy so powerful that Beyoncé’s dramatic, almost apocalyptic fire/water imagery feels apropos. It’s a burning, a drowning. And if Beyoncé’s biblical imagery and taste for happy endings holds any sort of promise, it’s of a baptism, or even a full-fledged resurrection. Move over, Yeezus.

“Accountability” adds further layers to the racial politics that Beyoncé has been brewing ever since the world discovered her blackness. Images of black maternity and childhood flash across the screen, some real, some enacted. Beyoncé recites, “Mother dearest, let me inherit the earth. Teach me how to make him beg…Did he convince you he was a god? Did you get on your knees daily…Am I talking about your husband or your father?” We’re momentarily released f-rom the confines of a marriage into a wider world of family inheritance and cultural critique. Then the acoustic guitar comes in and ushers in a true miracle: a Beyoncé country song. Dressed as a Southern belle, Beyoncé sings about her daddy, guns, and the Bible. She rides a horse in blue jeans and croons “my daddy warned me about men like you.” This is Bey at her most subversive and powerful, subtly recycling country music tropes and re-signifying them through the visual landscape of Black Lives Matter.

“Reformation” is a lush, living pop song. Catchy and light, it’s set to a backd-rop of statuesque black women dressed in gauzy priestess robes, wading into blue waters. In “Forgiveness,” Beyoncé is back in the here and now, sitting at a piano with headphones on, and belting a full-on, gospel chorus-accompanied ballad. She’s ushering us right along toward an emotional and musical crescendo, singing, “Now that reconciliation is possible, if we’re gonna heal, let it be glorious.” We see Bey and Jay in bed together, face-to-face, cuddling and cherishing one another. She’s wearing her ring again, and he literally kisses her feet. Let’s just take a minute here to acknowledge the sheer badassery of a woman who convinces her husband to grovel on-screen in an album that’s all about his lying, cheating ass…especially if that husband is one of the most respected men in the rap game.

In “Resurrection,” we return to “Formation” visual motifs: Mardi Gras Indian garb, the mourning of young black men, and of course, black girl magic. Black women, including the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown, hold pictures of their lost sons in their hands. Social justice activist and millennial icon Amandla Stenberg joins Beyoncé in her pursuit of capturing black excellence onscreen. “Hope” strengthens this proposed lineage between black girls past and present, with Beyoncé performing on stage for a group of women in Southern dress. “Lemonade” is just as much a love letter to these women as it is to Jay Z: black girl drummers in braids, ballerinas in elbow-length gloves, mothers, wives, grandmothers. And on “Redemption,” Beyoncé speaks directly to the women who made her: “Grandmother, the alchemist. You spun gold out of this hard life.” We flash to footage of Jay and Bey at their wedding, playing with their daughter, and getting inked with matching tattoos; these moments are intertwined with other black lovers, young families, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and wives.

Lemonade is an ode to strong women, black love, and everyday magic. With the help of silence, poetry, beauty, fierce clothes, music, Blue Ivy, James Blake, Kendrick Lamar, and Quvenzhané Wallis (to name a few of her collaborators), Beyoncé cre-ates a fantasy world out of the broken pieces of her reality. In the end, it’s her most beautiful, personal, political, powerful, and expansive work to date.