Beyonce - 4

Sorry about the unremarkable thread title. Can a mod change it when the album title is revealed?

Anyway, her new single has just leaked. Unfortunately, it has tags. What do you guys think?

I guess "Pon De Floor" is the new beat to sample from nowadays.

http://www.eastexclusives.com/2011/04/18/beyonce-girls-who-run-the-world-tags/

Can't believe I ever fronted on "Pon de Floor"

Yeah I heard Pon De Floor in a college mailroom last week.

One of those tracks I had to hear in a club to be like "oh ok hot damn"

accidentally started a different thread for this

i think that's just a demo, but tbh i'd be totally happy with it as the finished product - sounding pretty huge to me. really good to have a big-name pop single i'm 100% on board with instantly, after the britney/gaga whatevia.

also i love the riddimification of beats as great as "pon de floor".

― lex pretend, Tuesday, April 19, 2011 7:59 AM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that said i have some massive sleigh bells sized reservations about what's going to be on the album - seriously B, if you collab with them it is OVER BETWEEN US

― lex pretend, Tuesday, April 19, 2011 8:01 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm glad she's back but idk this is just kinda okay to me -- i was never that hot on "pon de floor" anyway & this isn't nearly as good as "ass on the floor" as far as those things go

i hope her adventurism w/ collaborators doesn't lead to an utter fucking mess of an album, though i don't think it can get much worse than sasha fierce anyway -- i hope she got all that serious "artistic" bullshit out of her system & goes back to making "freakum dress" type joints

(and as long as i'm making arbitrary comparisons after listening to this three times, i will say that it's not better than "judas" OR "single ladies")

Okay I locked the other thread and changed the title in this one.

I'd be very suspicious about it as an overall direction but come on Beyonce has the potential to make one amazing rock song. Maybe not with Sleigh Bells though.

Looking forward to hearing the single, I thought 'Ass On The Floor' drained a lot of the energy from the 'Pon De Floor' beat, which I suppose was kind of the point, but an on-form Beyonce over the top of that could be incredible.

i would be interested in beyonce/sleigh bells as long as it didn't sound like beyonce doing sleigh bells karaoke

don't know what you guys are all up in arms about, B's been fucking with sleigh bells for a decade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikOWQ9YIb-A

Ur a true dad, some dude.

lest we forget the definitive vocal of "pon de floor", though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE4EFFDCbNw

^^^I should probably avoid pop/r&b music websites for the next year. I can smell the trolls using this saying how much a "thief" Beyonce is because someone already put a vocal to the song.

well in fairness no one has heard that, so I'm pretty sure you're safe

is anyone else hoping for Beyonce to do a daggering video?

^^^Pop trolls are a sneaky bunch, you never what they will uncover to prove their point of hating an artists so much. I remember during B'Day, people slagged on Beyonce on the song "Resentment" because she apparently changed one word and got a songwriting credit. The song was already recorded by Jazmine Sullivan & Victoria Beckham with very similar song lyrics.

Back to the song, "Girls (Who Run The World)" is like a combination of Beyonce's shouty, attitude-driven B'Day voice and her explicit girl power anthems of Survivor. I hope it's not the finished version because Diplo's production is lazy if this is all he can come up with. Beyonce really does carry the song. Hopefully the final version's music will match her vocal delivery.

^^^I should probably avoid pop/r&b music websites for the next year. I can smell the trolls using this saying how much a "thief" Beyonce is because someone already put a vocal to the song.

― lilsoulbrother, Tuesday, April 19, 2011 1:01 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nah us trolls are still trying to find a way to call Diplo a thief while people are using drums from his gross cartoon Jamaican stereotype creation

^^^^Speaking of Diplo being called a thief:

http://www.racialicious.com/2011/04/13/it%E2%80%99s-complicated-djs-appropriation-and-a-whole-host-of-other-ish/

i don't know when everyone on pop websites started talking like some sort of drag queen parody, but i could live without seeing phrases like "wig-snatching" etc for a while. idk those people are mental, also really stupid.

i said on twitter how much i enjoy the riddimification of beats like "pon de floor" - princess nyah's far from the only one to have done it, there were a few others at the time and then obviously there's "ass on the floor". i like how that riddimification can enter mainstream pop rather than just being limited to hot mixtape cuts, too (and it's not like it's beyoncé's first foray into this world, cf "diva" which was basically reheated 'a milli" (another song that fared really well as a pop riddim)). anyway going on about how it's not a new beat is akin to shouting at lumidee for "never leave you" because other artists used the diwali riddim.

as for diplo, haven't there been articles about his appropriation for the best part of half a decade? they had truth to them then, they still do, he seems like a bit of a twat and i'll never be able to fully cosign him but he's not worthless by any means. still giving most of the "pon de floor" credit to switch though.

is anyone else hoping for Beyonce to do a daggering video?

YES

i don't know when everyone on pop websites started talking like some sort of drag queen parody, but i could live without seeing phrases like "wig-snatching" etc for a while.

my (ok largely uneducated) guess is since the new season of 'rupaul's drag race' started

still giving most of the "pon de floor" credit to switch though.
otm

Ahh yeah duh Switch!!!! I keep forgetting his existence though I like everything he does by himself. Just found out he co-produced "Girls..." so I have a little hope.

i don't know when everyone on pop websites started talking like some sort of drag queen parody, but i could live without seeing phrases like "wig-snatching" etc for a while. idk those people are mental, also really stupid.

Yeah it seems to be two modes for people talking about this genre. It's either drag queen parody or the hard gangster parody. It's really draining to read after awhile.

i said on twitter how much i enjoy the riddimification of beats like "pon de floor" - princess nyah's far from the only one to have done it, there were a few others at the time and then obviously there's "ass on the floor".

lol lex, I was just making a joke about no one knowing that Princess Nyah song! obv I agree conceptually with you 100% re: the validity of beat-stealing arguments (ie, they are stupid unless the song sucks, and even then the reason the song sucks is usually not because the beat was used somewhere else first)

how dare beyonce let lil jon scream shit all over hew new single!

http://gawker.com/#!5793560/beyonces-new-single-is-all-kinds-of-bad

ugh gawker really???

congrats Gawker for making me like this even more

also lol @ dude for complaining about Lil Jon... and then linking a version on the article that doesn't have the interruption he's complaining about

anyway as someone who lost the "Irreplaceable" argument, I feel I can authoritatively state that no one gives two shits about the quality of Beyonce's lyrics

Maura's take.

Gawker is the website version of the gay male/straight female doing a drag queen parody.

anyway as someone who lost the "Irreplaceable" argument, I feel I can authoritatively state that no one gives two shits about the quality of Beyonce's lyrics

Beyonce has always been about loud noise and anthemic chants. As the listener, you don't know who she is as a person.

Oh thanks for the mod who changed the thread title.

Beyonce has always struck me as being a really sweet, demure person who, if you displeased her, would shyly take your hand and slowly, lovingly pull off your fingers one by one.

but yeah, you don't really know who she is based on her songs

i dunno i feel like i've gotten a very good idea of what a beautiful, talented, soulful robot she is from her songs

i get the impression from her songs that beyoncé is a really private person who is determined not to let anyone see the "real her", and who's got the chutzpah to get away with that. and that she really, really loves money. not (just) in the flashy bling way that's pop's common currency, i mean really loves money like a hedge fund owner loves money. actually beyoncé is pretty much the hedge fund of the pop industry.

the best look into her personality imo is rich juz's concert video cut ups

idk she does ridic camp pretty well but i don't think she's as invested in it all like céline dion is (speaking of someone who rich's concert video cut-ups enabled me to see in a genuinely new light)

not but it at least shows that she has a sense of humor, which you would barely detect otherwise

the non-demo of this that incorporates those squealing synths from 'pon de floor' is better than the version that leaked last night

yeah the synths make it that much huger

Not a fan of this, it's overstuffed and kind of aimless...

"Judas" is definitely better, if we're comparing

call me a prude but i would argue against cutely bandying terms like riddimification around seriously for stuff that doesnt relate to either an actual riddim or evoke riddim culture however diasporic it may be. stuff jacking stuff is as old as the hills, there has to be some sort of effort of distinction to preserve the term's meaning, even if that meaning can seem liminal and instinctive.

I'll just wait for the Pomplamoose cover.

i don't know when everyone on pop websites started talking like some sort of drag queen parody, but i could live without seeing phrases like "wig-snatching" etc for a while. idk those people are mental, also really stupid.

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 19 April 2011 18:46 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

and lmao at battered ciara stans taking the high ground

it's not just "stuff jacking stuff" though is it, it's reusing the actual same beat. "riddimification" is just a handy way of clearing things up for people who think she's just copying/ripping off

she is though! and if the swag is strong, who cares?

i mean yeah ok i do see what you're saying though, but it's just a little too pricey as reductions go imo.

i tend to think of ripping off as something that people try to keep people from noticing, or don't admit to. born this way/express yourself. whereas that this song is beyoncé over pon de floor is the point of it, really.

it's not just "stuff jacking stuff" though is it, it's reusing the actual same beat. "riddimification" is just a handy way of clearing things up for people who think she's just copying/ripping off

― lex pretend, Tuesday, April 19, 2011 3:33 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

and by afaict equating just the snare drum pattern with the entire "beat" (i.e. all of the instrumentation) you're either willfully bending the truth or demonstrating an inability to tell the difference

"countdown" never grabbed me as much as love on top or best I never had, but I can acknowledge why people like it

rtc linked this interview on another thread with "Countdown" producer Lamb that has some cool info about the origin of the song: http://youknowigotsoul.com/?p=17193

i tried reading that this morning... has to be one of the worst edited interviews i've ever read

Maybe it was attempting to mirror the song's production.

lol

The editor going TEN...NINE as the reporter approached deadline

reverend otm re: "party"

that song has the best harmonies

http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/choice-excerpts-from-beyonc-knowles-selected-letters-vol-1

i cant imagine 1+1 underperforming tbh

― lebroner (D-40), Friday, June 10, 2011 12:24 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Still think 1+1 is a hit

― arachno-misogynist (D-40), Saturday, June 18, 2011 2:34 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As in a song destined to be one

― arachno-misogynist (D-40), Saturday, June 18, 2011 2:35 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Still think 1+1 will be a hit hold this against me later

― arachno-misogynist (D-40), Sunday, June 19, 2011 11:16 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

heh just heard this song for the first time in like 8 months and remembered how utterly confident deej was about it how big it was going to be

Why wasn't it released as a proper single though? So weird.

i'm pretty much in denial that "1+1", "love on top" and "countdown" WEREN'T huge hits. it makes no sense. they felt massive, they felt ubiquitous, they were amazing, and i plan to continue ignoring any and all evidence to the contrary

it was the year of COUNTDOWN and SUPERBASS and that is just obvious

even for an album where the radio hits it had didn't have super obvious radio potential, i dunno i have a hard time picturing it in that light. (xpost)

Yeah, "Love On Top" was huge in my world. I'm not interested in deviating from that alternate narrative.

in my world, "End of Time" was a single

"Love On Top" will prob be one of the top 5 biggest R&B songs of 2012 when Billboard does its year-end charts. still hear "Countdown" on the radio pretty regularly too.

I heard Love on Top an awful lot on R&B radio in the spring ,yeah.

it was kinda neat that it ended up peaking around the time she gave birth, in light of the VMA performance

love on top never really made a huge chart impact afaik but it was - and is - quite popular amongst my peers

a student in one of my classes plans to use 1+1 as one of her examples in an essay i just assigned and i dorked out to a ridiculous degree when i discovered it. still love that song the most.

bet that kid's algebra teacher is less thrilled with them

lol

'love on top' and 'party,' especially, were on the radio all the time down here. and then randomly 'dance with you' was really big for a minute too

yeah "Dance With You" is pretty inescapable at the moment. kinda don't know how that one was left off the album proper.

The 3 bonus tracks are the ones I listen to most now.

Schoolin, Life is probably my favorite song on the whole album.

http://bit.ly/V9N7ly

http://thatgrapejuice.net/2015/03/the-dream-reveals-beyonce-recorded-fela-inspired-album/

In an entry on Genius.com, Dream (whose real name is Terius Nash) wrote:
“We did a whole Fela album that didn’t go up. It was right before we did 4. We did a whole different sounding thing, about twenty songs. She said she wanted to do something that sounds like Fela. That’s why there’s so much of that sound in the “End of Time.”
There’s always multiple albums being made. Most of the time we’re just being creative, period. We’re talking about B, somebody who sings all day long and somebody.”

Based on "End of Time" that would be the greatest thing ever made.

4 is my favorite beyonce album

I imagine there's a lot of stuff on the 4 cutting room floor. Didn't she work with Sleigh Bells on that album?

the figure floated at the time was that they recorded 72 songs for the album, and similar figures have been bandied about for some of B's other albums. one wonders if there'll ever be any clearing out of her vaults.

4 is my favorite beyonce album

― nose, Sunday, March 22, 2015 7:38 PM (

Cobbling together 50 of my favorite albums 2010-2015 I realized 4 is the Beyonce album I want to listen to most.

b'day all day, but i would gladly listen to 20 songs of terius/beyonce

the sequencing was always a weakness of 4 for me, so i now prefer the 2013 re-release as my default version of the album:

1. "Love on Top" 4:27
2. "Party" (featuring André 3000) 4:04
3. "Schoolin' Life" 4:52
4. "Countdown" 3:33
5. "I Miss You" 2:58
6. "Dance for You" 6:15
7. "I Care" 3:59
8. "Rather Die Young" 3:43
9. "1+1" 4:34
10. "End of Time" 3:44
11. "Run the World (Girls)" 4:51
12. "Best Thing I Never Had" 4:13
13. "Start Over" 3:19
14. "I Was Here" 3:58

that sequence seems hideous

where is the sequence that moves "Party" to a burning trash heap?

that's a mean way to refer to J. Cole

i always listened to this album with "best thing i never had", "i was here" and "girls run the world" taken off with the three bonus tracks replacing them. i didn't even bother trying to re-sequence it but yeah.

Idk no matter how often I and we have discussed re-sequencing albums I've never actually done it. I skip tracks.

yeah same

although the continuous mix of katy's b last album -- which had a totally different tracklist -- was far superior

i don't re-sequence often but occasionally if i like an album a lot but find the running order unflattering i play it on shuffle a lot, which is what i did with 4 before the re-release.

4 was like The Pinkprint in that the first trio of singles was so totally unpromising that it was a pleasant surprise when it eventually spun off some really good singles

Yeah. For me 4 revealed itself as a flawed album that I nevertheless love unreservedly.

i kinda feel that it got sonned by the self titled album, which is sort of an objective step up in... ambition? or at least really gave her an album that brought her art up to the level of her celebrity.

but on the other hand i feel like not everything on that album works, and that it doesn't hold together as tight as people think it does. and that despite it's ill-fitting singles 4 makes a convincing argument for the ease of a sort conservatism?

anyway i'm not sure which album is better but as the legend of the self-titled grows 4 is bound to be perpetually underrated

4 is her most naturalist work, "Run The World" aside; it's the album on which she assumes the mantle of pop's best vocalist by her emphasis on effortlessness - even when the album sounds classicist it sounds like it's writing new classics rather than trying to measure up to them. This is not true of all the tracks but it's particularly true of those tracks which feel like they're at the album's center ("1 + 1", "Love On Top").

Beyonce is not "effortless" by any stretch but I feel like it's the next logical step (not up, but along): blowing up those aspects of Beyonce's vocal attack which make her the best in the business until they seem perverse (as anything does under such close examination).

Neither approach is necessarily better but I think the latter is more obviously remarkable. But it also makes 4 more interesting than it might have seemed otherwise at this point: rather than the graceful drift into adulthood that it was received as being at the time, 4 is a stepping stone to something quite different, a lefthand swerve in a series of lefthand swerves.

/4/ is her most naturalist work, "Run The World" aside; it's the album on which she assumes the mantle of pop's best vocalist by her emphasis on effortlessness

This reads to me as a faulty premise. Most of 4 (aside from "I Miss You") is Beyoncé indulging in the purest form of her forced, muscular yelling-as-singing, with every popped vein on her neck sticking out of almost every track. For me, it's the album where Holleroncyé clicked for more than three isolated tracks on the album.

I think we're agreeing in substance while disagreeing on terms - yes it's all muscular yelling-as-singing, but if it's forced in a strict physical sense, I think she inhabits the persona that vocal approach tends to create very comfortably.

I remember when she performed "1 + 1" on Idol, and it was kinda like "children, my shower improvisations have more overblown heartbreak than your best ever "I Have Nothing" rendition."

Her worst single imo