What is pushed to the greys here is expression, is fairness, is reasonable, is curiosity, is truth

I’m glad you mentioned the last paragraph. I think Noname doesn’t realize she perpetuating the idea of burden black women having to be the backbone of the black community without taking in account their mental or physical limitations. It’s also a blindspot where we expect black entertainers to be leaders and ignoring actual social activists.

It redeems itself in long form; any short ‘trailer’ would just look like a hodgepodge of Africa (c) Nas in Belly and in its full version its a respectful, artful representation of various cultures on and off the continent (with many appearances on and off screen by people from those cultures)

That said, she’s not above critique; this is a film and soundtrack made for a Disney corporation and everyone involved is about adding zero’s to their bank accounts.

Overall though, imho it’s unfair to ask Beyonce to fix capitalism (and neither would I want to) and other social ills…it’s an arthouse movie with a kickass soundtrack. As someone who had to sit through many similar movies by old white guys; ya Baz Lauchmann’s on the musical side, ya Terrence Malick on the ‘these random scenes are supposed to represent one story’, I don’t get why we can’t just let Beyonce cook, and this is from someone who’s not her biggest fan.

its interesting once again we are asking a black woman to do all the fucking work (sing, dance, also must serve as a visual component to Das Kapital) while your random white popstar can just be a popstar.

aren’t most albums, visual or otherwise, made with at least one of the main goals to hopefully add another zero to your bank account?

Have you watched or are you basing your opinion off of what detractors said BEFORE it even came out? Africa is shown in every facet in this movie. Also, many Africans critiqued Noname for speaking for them. The film is beautiful and heartfelt and you need to watch it before judgement.

ok what is with this sentence can someone explain

Lol at the time I wrote the comment there wasn’t a post about Black is King. There was a post about the release of the Already video.

The argument being made, and one that I think is worth considering, is that Beyonce is using African imagery and culture in the same way that oppressor’s have been doing for centuries: otherizing it and using it as a means towards commodification. To say nothing of the fact she’s reinforcing centuries old stereotypes on top of it all. I’ve seen a few hot takes calling Black is King “Wakanda bullshit” and first glance, it’s hard not to see it that way.

I’m a deeply cynical person as it is but it’s very hard to see this as anything other than Beyonce trying to add another zero to her bank account. Maybe the message is in the right place, but it comes across as shallow at best and completely capitalistically vapid at worst.

So The Lion King: The Gift came out last year, and mixes songs and (the CGI remake of The Lion King) film dialogue snippets.

The Lion King: The Gift Deluxe Edition strips out the dialogue, and adds an extra song or two, and is intended more as the soundtrack to this visual album. I don’t stream; I bought it on iTunes.

I have nothing against Beyonce and her music, but these kind of big, prestigy, concept type releases can be so tiring.

I think the film/visual album will have some folks reassessing the album for sure. I get why it was received lukewarmly last year but it has bops. I think the so-called “Deluxe Edition” released on Friday will help too with the addition of “Black Parade” and the subtraction of the Lion King dialogue samples (though these too largely worked better in the visual album).

i dont think you’re alone. the disney+ release really limits it’s audience, on top of the fact that the lion king film and soundtrack were…let’s say received lukewarmly. no one even seems to want to pirate it the way they did lemonade.

The main “lesson of The Lion King (2019)” would seem, to me, to be that we can’t animate photorealistic animals without giving them dead eyes yet.

Oh…wait.