Like her marriage-solidifying joint album with hubby JAY-Z, it’s tempting, on the surface, to just give Beyonce’s Homecoming album a perfect 5 rating.
If solely to avoid the wrath of the omnipresent “Beyhive,” a faction of the fandom known to invade social media spaces like a pack of Vandals and leave lemon and bee emojis on unsuspecting Instagram photos.
That, however, would sell the album extremely short: not only is Homecoming an artistically-sound triumph, it’s a cultural touchstone and, quite possibly, the live album of a generation.
As we all know, “Beychella” was the driving force behind Homecoming and its accompanying Netflix documentary of the same name. And the album is nothing if not hefty: forty songs long featuring the best-known tracks of Beyonce’s oeuvre, delightfully remixed and mastered for the expectant live audience inside California’s most coveted desert.
But don’t mistake Beyonce’s performance for a cheesy Vegas-style retrospective. This is Beyonce in peak form — physically, spiritually, psychically, and performance-wise. She has previously shown her ability to rap (see the Summer ’18-winning “Apeshit”), to get soulful (Dreamgirls soundtrack), and even to get down-and-dirty (Lemonade).
On Homecoming, though, she brings it all together in one supersonic performance.
The standard Beyonce fare can be found here — “Crazy In Love,” “Bow Down,” “Drunk In Love” — but that’s not, really, what makes the album the classic that it is. It’s nice, don’t misunderstand — but if Beyonce had just released a live album of her greatest hits, it wouldn’t be perfect in any way. Rather, it would just be a “live performance album” that would join the infinite number of live albums that have come before and will come since it dropped.
What makes Homecoming — both the album and the live performance — so classic is that Beyonce makes clear, now and forever, that she is unapologetically, and beautifully, Black. She is Black in her essence — Black Excellence, personified — and in her performance, she makes the audience believe that they, too, are Black Excellence personified.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmmnLe79wWE
The living legend doesn’t achieve this by standing onstage and bleating quasi-feminist platitudes. That would be boring, and Beyonce — First of Her Name, Mother of Dragons, and Queen of All Things That Slay — does not do boring.
Rather, Beyonce achieves this by bobbing and weaving through nearly 150 years of African-American art, poetry, and activism, and turning it into the musical performance of a lifetime. In between covers of such classics as “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “You Don’t Love Me (No No No),” Beyonce tips her metaphorical hat to the likes of Clark Sisters, Big Freedia, Nina Simone, Fela Kuti, and James Weldon Johnson.
She even gets daring in places, giving a cyberpunk twist to “Formation” and duetting with her baby sister Solange on a lilting “Get Me Bodied.”
There’s only one minor — indeed, very minor — issue with Homecoming, as an album: unlike the similarly galvanizing Frampton Comes Alive — which stood alone as a live album, and was, in fact, one of the defining moments of Peter Frampton’s now-largely-forgotten career — it’s difficult to see it as a stand-alone album without the context of the accompanying Netflix film.
The good news is, it doesn’t need to.
Beyonce’s place in history has already long been cemented. And while much ado has been made about her, almost to the point of parody, Homecoming is one of those times where there’s no question as to why that’s so.
It’s Beyonce’s world, bitches — we just live in it. Bow down.
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4.8?! FOH!!!!
This is from the same people that called that bs Carters album a 5.0 I’m not surprised smfh
Cause the carters was a fire album
Most overrated artist of this generation
She got buried by Slim Thug on that song from the Pink Panther soundtrack
Assholes! you guys allowed Solange to be disrespected on your website with very racist insults and you didn’t delete any of them also you lowly rated her incredible album..I love Queen Bey but she don’t fuck wit yall! get off her pussy. you know dam well this aint a 4.8/5…and yall still foul for giving Drogas Wave a low rating. #yallarefakeindustryvultures #stoptryin #youfailed #theindustrydontlikeyall #theylikeignorantshitlikewshhandhotnewhiphop #notyall #bereal #djboothkeepsitrealwhynotyall? #posers
Jay Z made her relevant, she’s lucky not talented. No Jay Z no career for that frumpy average looking thot
Nothing to do with hip hop….she’s terrible, FOH!! You guys must be sponsored by Roc Nation….
They have contracts with Tidal, you’re not wrong
This ho is all hyped up because of the politics she got herself into with her drug dealer hubby. I don’t know anyone that thinks this highly of Beyonce. The media is retarded.
B allday!! True performer and cant NO byotch f with her!!!!!!!! Cardii..nicki..them kard jenner hoes!! Nobody!! Queen B!!
Does no one know how to critique anymore? Just froth at the mouth and gush and press publish.
what a shame.
So overrated. She is so calculated and trying to be sophisticated. Made some of the worse songs ever like Run The World & Ring On It. And yup Lemonade en Bey were great albums, but hardly any replay value, while almost all Jay-z’s album have replay value, Kelly Rowland made mothafukin cathy songs, but doesn’t got credit and Solange her albums are way more creative.
And Halo sucks big time.
almost all of Jay’s albums have replay value? Not this millennium they don’t. 2 good albums in the last 16 years is not a good strike rate.
Look at the credits of her “songs” she dont do shit. No queen. Just a regular singer with way too much promotion that pushes her into weak minds. Shes pop. Shes radio. Her music is soulless because she doesnt write it, arrange it, or do pretty much anything other than just show up. Garbage.
The overrated nobody strikes again. You only deal with this bitch because she’s black, and because she’s the wife of another overrated nobody who became famous of his business moves and not of his rap skills. Fuck the whole Carter family.
SHE IS NOT A BLACK NEGRO WOMAN SHE IS AN ANGEL (NO RACE) SENT FROM HEAVEN TO MAKE YOUR WING WONG GO DING DONG! DING DONG!!! DING DONG!!! DING DONG!!!
I like how objective this review is
This morning, I awoke to find out that my teenie white penis had grown into a massive Negro schlonger donger hanging between my pasty white legs!!! I had been praying to Allah for months day and night that my teeny white pee pee would grow to the length and girth of that of the typical American Negro. Today, at long last, my prayers were answered! Where once there was a tiny pink wee wee, now there is a giant black mamba, a 10 inch boa constrictor hanging out of my boxers, splayed across the floor! I thought my prayers had indeed been answered, my life was finally worth living, all the bitches would want me, and I praised and thanked the Profit Muhammed until tears streamed from my eyes and snot dripped from my nose, but I am now suddenly shocked to find that, although my penis is now Sambo-Sized, all the money that was in my bank account has suddenly vanished, my fridge is full of nothing but two week old fried chicken and malt liquor, I have dozens of illegitimate kids with names like Leroi and Shaquanna, I have four fat, lazy, angry baby mamas on food stamps, I have nothing in my wallet but a maxed out EBT card, I have three outstanding warrants for vagrancy, robbery, and public chicken consumption, I’m unemployed and I live in a filthy trap house! HELP! HEEEELLLLPPPP!!! PLEASE SOMEBODY HELP MEEEEE!!!
Hip Hop.
…IS THE POLAR OPPOSITE OF WHAT THIS SHITTY ALBUM IS.
Oy! Schvartzes!!!
1!
Trash
Definitely a paid review
Trash trash trash just a compilation of all her old songs with a marching band sounds like homecoming at your typical HBCU and then she totally messed up the classic by maze and Frankie Beverley at the end. Be original and make your own music
I wouldn’t listen to Beyoncé if you paid me … her elitist attitude is completely gross … all you have to do is watch her Pierce Morgan interview to understand …. she is beyond talented but at some point that’s just not enough
Queen B, but it’s Overrated. #hiphopforce