Beyonce - 4

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

lol @ gaga trying to "get away" with biting a gigantic iconic hit but beyonce using a bit of a bloggy niche dance hit is all about low key transparency

um...

the entire "Pon De Floor" beat is in there; the clavicle, the sub bass drum, all of the sound effects... the only thing missing is the lead synth line

my "afaict" was an insufficient CYA move for not bothing to re-listen to both songs before posting, i see

lol

although fwiw my point stands that if there is a prominent musical element like a synth line added or subtracted from one track to the next "riddim" is probably not the right term to use

i havent heard the CDQ version yet but...

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

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, April 19, 2011 8:20 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark

so then Wayne Wonder, Lumidee and Sean Paul didn't all use the Diwali riddim?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFnwBtLrIYI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09qDvl4tB1c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmxD7jDuPR0

note that prominent musical elements (synth lines) have been added/subtracted across all three songs

aw i really want to hear this and it's gone from youtube and i'm not going sketchier than that at the office

(ftr I don't think this is a "riddim" either, but that is mostly because there is zero connection between Beyonce and dancehall; it seems a lot easier to make that argument that it does to make easily-disprovable-via-legit-riddim-examples arguments)

yeah - is there a term for rappers rapping over existing beats on mixtapes?

beat-jacking, r|t|c already alluded to it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vsLcNJdF9k

can we not all save ourselves the bother and just agree that there are many shades of grey to the matter, too many to enumerate, and that i am probably right

lol dude I think were already at that point

at least, I was

am with brainwasher so far on this tune anyway

coincidentally enough wrt to this beat, my steady u__u in the face of much energy expended is reminding me of listening to 'lose my breath' for the first time

yeah that's a very good comparison point, i had a deja vu of Beyonce trying way too hard feeling listening to this that probably came from that (and not "Deja Vu," which was not trying enough)

this song is kinda nutty :)

saying that, i think if i were an exec i would have released this first too - if the video proves suitably spectacular then a refamiliarising bey waterboarding is all the people want for starters anyway, and this is that

it's nice that she went with a song title that'll easily feed into the "omg b hates rihanna" blog narrative too

"lose my breath" is still amazing

hopefully the video from this stays far the fuck away from m.i.a./"rude boy" territory

"lose my breath" is still amazing

― lex pretend, Tuesday, April 19, 2011 1:45 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rly tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTlWtG8qXvo&feature=player_embedded#at=20

^^^Lol. Maybe I'm getting a little older, but really is the song that bad??? Also, this is like her 4th solo album, and her 8th or 9th overall. The woman can only make so many "classics"/"bangers" consecutively. I think she can afford to experiment or stumble at this moment of her career.

This also reminds me of how her rabid fans hated "Deja Vu" and tried to create a petition for it and the video to be removed. In addition, I would like to know how more women/girls thinks of the song. We already have Maura who is the most balanced critique so far. The others have been gay men, and well we already noted how drag queen parody can go into full effect.

To clarify, I'm not saying that gay men don't have the right or the perspective to analyze/review pop music by female artists. If anything, gay men's critiques are highly valuable. But with forums like popjustice and the likes they can be quite shrill and remind me that despite the social connotations of being gay, we are still men at the end of the day.

I'm just saying I would like to see more women's/girl's reaction to the song, and yes even straight men too.

I don't think this song is all that but lsb otm

I don't necessarily mind Beyoncé's brand of feminism so much - it's an essential part of who she is as an artist and probably as a person - but I do feel as though it's steadily regressed over the years, from being pretty sophisticated and smart back at the beginning of Destiny's Child ("Hey Ladies", "Bug A Boo" & others) to now just being peurile hollering like "Single Ladies" and this, which seems to be her most basic female empowerment anthem to date.

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