4/5
Benaissance.
'Don't Hurt Yourself'. This weekend I should be at 'Fuji Rocks'. A legendary festival just outside of Tokyo. This year headlined by Jack White, Vampire Weekend, Halsey and Japanese Breakfast, overlooking Mount Fuji in Japan. But corona cases are getting crazy again. Besides, this week feels like a music festival itself this Summer for your Spotify playlists. Even after the last one featuring the 'Lemonade' guitarist's second album of the year ('Entering Heaven Alive'). Same song for the RZA ('Bobby Digital and the Pit of Snakes'). One of Ben Harper's best ('Bloodline Maintenance'). A She & Him tribute to Beach Boy Brian Wilson ('Melt Away'). And ODESZA's best with 'The Last Goodbye'. This week we already have two album of the year contenders with the sophomore sets from Maggie Rogers ('Surrender') and King Princess ('Hold On Baby') on the same day, for two who gave us the best of 2019 with their debuts. But we all know who runs the world and what the main event is. The return of The Queen, B. The Carter who buried her husband lyrically, going 'Apes###', rapping in the Louvre in Paris, France like Mona Lisa, after spraying all that 'Lemonade'. The last and best blast of an album. Even NaS couldn't 'Ether' Jigga like that. But 'EVERYTHING IS LOVE' in capitals. It's just the times we go through in trial and tribulation as man and wife. It's all gone now as bygones be. But the 'RENAISSANCE ' like a Q-Tip classic is already in a quest for controversy. 'Milkshake' and 'Millionaire' singer Kelis already hating this right now after Bey and her old Neptune friends didn't clear a sample with her. She says "it's theft" and she more than has a point. Especially when it comes to the ownership of her great body of work. We'll let that settle as it will as the dust does the same. Until then it's time to get crazy in love with Beyoncé again like destiny, children.
She's on a horse. A pale glass one in all her black beauty. Riding in almost naked like Lady Godiva. Queen B may bring "triggering" 'Milkshake' 'ENERGY' to the yard in all-caps, but that's not all she samples on this lost in transition, tour de force that traps old with new in her music box. Nuanced nostalgia over brilliantly brutal beats that make what she did in the Louvre look like something from her sketchbook. "Just vibe/Votin' out 45, don't get outta line, yeah/Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, pick a side/Only double lines we cross is dollar signs, yeah/Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, hol' up/Wait, I hear you just got paid, make it rain, energy/She more Cancún, he more Saint-Tropez/Big wave in the room, the crowd gon' move/Look around, everybody on mute/Look around, it's me and my crew/Big energy", she raps. Charged up because her life is better than yours. Bossy! Reach, teach and motherf###### PREACH! Bey also shows she's not 'Way 2 Sexy' for a Right Said Fred sample too. Just like Drake. Out of this world for this 'ALIEN SUPERSTAR' ("I'm too classy for this world, forever, I'm that girl/Feed you diamonds and pearls, ooh, baby/I'm too classy to be touched, I paid them all in dust/I'm stingy with my love, ooh, baby"). Right after she gets 'COZY' following the epic intro of this 'RENAISSANCE' proving to us that 'I'M THAT GIRL' (not me...her). Do that little turn on the catwalk. Fred becoming the new nostalgia go to like the 'Love and Thunder' of Thor having to cut a Kate Bush track as 'Stranger Things' had already run up that hill with headphones on. Levitate, levitate, levitate. With new Kendrick and Beyoncé in the same year, this sounds like 'Freedom'. And "unicorn is (the) uniform". There's nothing mythical about this. Just mystical. 'CUFF IT'. In platinum ones. F### gold!
Nothing's going to 'BREAK MY SOUL' now as Carter gets it, "I'm lookin' for motivation/I'm lookin' for a new foundation, yeah/And I'm on that new vibration." Now it's time for you to vibrate higher like the three stacks that went 'Back To Black' with her like the late, great Winehouse in a different fade for Shawn Carter's curated 'Great Gatsby' soundtrack, sport. All praise to the 'CHURCH GIRL' as we pass the streaming collection plate. Ripping the 'PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA', screaming like Ricky, as we 'MOVE' to this 'VIRGO'S GROOVE'. A six-minute disco ball of funk for Beyoncé's seventh seal of an album. It's getting 'HEATED' in heere too as she tells us "only a real one could tame me/only the radio could play me." Then, right in the 'THIQUE' of it she slows it down. But there's no real refrain here. "A## getting bigger/Racks getting bigger/Cash getting larger/He thought he was loving me good, I told him, "Go harder"/She thought she was killing that s###, I told her, "Go harder"/Just look at this alkaline wrist 'cause I got that water/A## getting thicker/Cash getting thicker (Thicker, thicker)/That's that thick, that's that real s###/That's that jelly, baby, champagne and cherry, baby/That's that thick, that's that ball drop/That's that keep going, that's that never stop." DAMN! This goes even harder than Thor herself, Natalie Portman's raps. Live like Saturday Night. Love God herself, Jack. 'ALL UP IN YOUR MIND' this is the perfect playlist of an amazing album to get you bodied in the gym. Trust me. Even a skinny John like me. Time to get 'THIQUE' (LOL). All as a big-three ends one of Beyoncé's best explicitly, a week after my 'B'Day'. '4', 'Sasha Fierce', the self-titled, self-explanatory. All of it. Ever since she was 'Dangerously In Love'. 'AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM' she proclaims...and the problem is her. 'PURE/HONEY' like Maggie or Mariah and the best use of the C U Next Tuesday word since 'Curb'. But this 'SUMMER RENAISSANCE' comes to an end (on this album at least. The streaming sounds will keep stepping over this scorching season) on a big number that's gonna rack 'em up. "Boy, you never have a chance/If you make my body talk, I'ma leave you in a trance/Got you walking with a limp, bet this body make you dance/Dance, dance, dance." Nothing hits higher than this 'Renaissance' song. Just call this revival a French rebirth. Au revoir. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM', 'PURE/HONEY', 'SUMMER RENAISSANCE'.
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