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His most recent task is the first with Disney: a music-related visual album he oversaw for the new version of “Lion King.” And as usual, it attracted the attention of the enthusiasts by little.
By Ben Sisario
The playbook is familiar, even if the main points are new: Beyoncé presents a new project. The details, rare, are tested for clues. Social media is full of anticipation and debate without delay.
On Friday, Beyoncé will release “Black Is King”, a visual album similar to last year’s Disney remake of “The Lion King,” on Disney’s streaming platform. Announced a month ago, “Black Is King” is an ambitious last-day task for Beyoncé (she wrote and directed it, and is an executive manufacturer) that adapts the story of the “Lion King” to a broader narrative of the African hitale and heritage. He also represents Beyoncé’s most recent initiative as a self-directed business figure, aligning himself with a leading media partner, as he has already done with Tidal, HBO, Apple and Netflix.
“Black Is King,” which is on the songs Beyoncé created for “The Lion King: The Gift,” another major album from last year’s remake, carries extra weight as Beyoncé herself has emphasized its current importance.
“The 2020 occasions made the film’s vision and message even more relevant,” he wrote in a rare explanatory article on Instagram. “I who when other black people tell our own stories, we can replace the axis of the global and tell our TRUE story of generational wealth and soul richness that are not told in our hitale books.”
Beyoncé and Disney presented some main points about the assignment itself. He took a foreign arts team, adding many Africans, and his cast includes ambitious names such as Lupita Nyong’o, Pharrell Williams, Naomi Campbell, Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s mother Tina Knowles-Lawson. The list of administrators who worked with Beyoncé on the task includes Emmanuel Adjei, Blitz Bazawule, Pierre Debusschere, Jenn Nkiru, Ibra Ake, Dikayl Rimmasch, Jake Nava and Ki Fordjour.
Even the basics remain a mystery. Officially called a visual album, it turns out to be a series of music videos connected through a narrative sequence, even if the number of songs or movies included is unclear. Representatives of Beyoncé and Disney declined to comment.
But the lack of data has stirred the pot, as online commentators, having noticed two short advances, have debated issues as if Beyoncé exploits African stereotypes and whether the obvious presence of a white butler in a black women’s tea is a sign of racism.
Somehow, this reflects one of Beyoncé’s wonderful talents: feeding the public verbal exchange with his art, while explaining very little about him.
“She allows her art to speak for herself,” said Treva Lindsey, associate professor of studies on women, gender and sexuality at Ohio State University, who has regularly commented on Beyoncé’s work. “I see Beyoncé as an area for physically powerful conversations. This occasionally says more about us as consumers and critics than about that.”
What is clearer, however, is Beyoncé’s media strategy, which has evolved in plain sight over the past decade. After starting his teenage career in Destiny’s Child, and doing what is expected of all emerging stars, such as giving interviews, in the early 2010s, he largely abandoned the popular pop star script and became an independent cultural brand. He hardly ever goes to the media.
Part of his technique has been to move from one platform to another to fulfill the wishes of the project. In early 2013, HBO showed its autobiographical film “Life Is Still a Dream”; later that year, the Internet melted and disappointed the music industry by releasing their album “Beyoncé” on Apple’s iTunes without warning.
“Lemonade”, her 2016 album, was first released on Tidal, the streaming service assumed through Jay-Z, her partner, and presented a couple’s film on HBO, with segments directed through Mark. Romanek, Jonas Akerlund, Melina Matsoukas and others. Last year, Netflix directed “Homecoming”, the film of their performance in Coachella 2018.
In this career, Disney is just the next media platform to offer Beyoncé, said Dan Runcie, who writes about the streaming and hip-hop industry on her Trapital website.
“He’s in the helm of Beyoncé’s empire,” Runcie said, “since it hasn’t locked up in a specific partner, but he’s realized it’s a bigger company and has kept its characteristics open.”
With more control, Beyoncé replaced his musical priorities. No longer for pop hits, he has used his albums and multimedia projects to explore challenging curtains and has made problems such as genre and race the central themes of his art, with black delight, and black femininity, specifically, that fits his specialty. subject lately. Years.
This, perhaps paradoxically, has made Beyoncé even more notorious and influential, with each and every one of the appearances, utterances or Instagram posts scrutinized in search of hidden meanings. Fame would possibly draw more attention to their black-lives and black struggle themes, such as its Black Panther-inspired dancers in his 2016 Super Bowl appearance, or photographs of Hurricane Katrina’s video for his song “Formation” – Robin M Boylorn, associate professor of communications at the University of Alabama.
Boylorn also noted Beyoncé’s appearance in Coachella, where the star directed an ode to the dances and music bands of traditionally black schools and universities, with significants that would possibly have oversized the heads of many whites in the audience, their use through Beyoncé has attracted attention and resulted in extensive media coverage.
“She takes an area like Coachella, which is inherently white, and turns it into a birthday party in the dark,” Boylorn said, “shows that it must replace the narrative and literally replace the face of the conversation. It is only a use of observation your platform.
What Beyoncé does with “Black Is King” remains to be noticed (at least for another day). But chances are this will be broadcast basically through the movie and not through a comment.
“It says less, ” said Lindsey, “because he has power.”
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