“I did not come to play with you hoes. I came to slay bitch.” When I die I want this on my tombstone.
It is 2:30am in London and I find myself going through a very dejá vu moment. It seems Beyonce has a connection to my sleep time because every time I try to go to bed to get up at a decent hour she drops something, I am swallowed into the vortex of all the Beyonce-ness of the internet and get all fan girl crazy. She did that with BEYONCE when I didn’t sleep the night through and now here she is with Formation doing the same thing and I might not make it to church tomorrow. I have always liked Beyonce, but the last couple of years I LOVE Beyonce. She is woke in these streets!! Don’t let the flawlessness fool you, she is lit, her methods are meticulous and timing ever so perfect.
Formation is all the things I think we have all been expecting from Beyonce in a long time. It is one thing to be famous but to use that platform for something that truly matters and will stand the test of time is quite another. A greater accomplishment if it can be done, for it is by their works and legacy outside their fame that the famous should be judged. This is the song we will judge Beyonce by for a long time to come. Formation is a celebration in Black pride and of Black people. She pulls the trigger on the shot gun to all her haters and rumour mongers, is greatly unapologetic with her sexuality and celebratory of who she is and where she is from. Illuminati you say? She’s bored of the mess whilst twirling on her haters. She is proud to be Black and damn proud of her roots- “my daddy Alabama. Mama Louisiana, you mix that Negro with that Creole make a Texas Bama“, and is so deeply in love with all that it means to be Black and proud, she lets us all know it- “I like my negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils“. She owns up to the her status but tells of her hustle to get to where she is and what she wants. Did anyone ever doubt that?
What makes this excel above and beyond are the messages and power in the imagery. The setting is New Orleans an opening which reminds us of Hurricane Katrina and its harsh aftermath- she sits on a cop car submerged in water. Her message is loud and unabashed; BLACK LIVES MATTER. From a newspaper front page of Dr. Martin Luther King “more than just a dreamer” to Bey flipping the middle finger, dressed in mourning attire, its painful and angry and real. But its gets even deeper with one of the most powerful moments in the video; a little boy dressed in a hood dancing before a line of armed cops. He throws his hands up and the police men mimic his action; Hands Up Don’t Shoot, the message is here. The camera pans to a wall with a graffiti message, “Stop Shooting Us.”
Bey and Jay have often been criticised for their inaction when it comes to political activism, especially in the wake of the spate of police brutality against black people but times have changed, gone are the days of getting bodied, whilst we still love those hits, we want to know that the same mouth that sings to get us amped is the same one that can call to arms and shout for justice. The legs that do the oh-oh-oh dance will stomp the pavement and march for peace. Formation is an anthem for the movement and an empowering rally cry for women to get in line and slay like she does, because she does slay. But this slayation is beyond fabulous hair and flawless makeup, it is a call to arms to get shit done and it is utterly brilliant in its offering. She is, in my opinion, the most powerful artist on the face of the planet and in the simplest yet most powerful of ways she is staging and stating her uprising the way she knows how.
It matters. It all matters and I am here for her
COME ON THROUGH!!
And Blue Ivy with that fro and her shrug, PRAISES!!