The song ends as Beyoncé sits crosslegged in an empty room dressed in a metallic bra set with her hair braided similarly to Nefertiti’s crown. A high school band accompanied by majorettes parade down a suburban street. In an abandoned parking garage, women dance in unison in long white dresses with their sleeves tied to each other. A lone female drummer plays in solitude as dancers in black begin to approach an SUV. The film opens with a shot of Beyoncé leaning against a car in a parking garage, her face obscured by her fur coat, before cutting to a desolate Fort Macomb, interspersed with shots of Beyoncé dressed in a black hoodie amongst the reeds and on an empty stage with closed red curtains. In total, the tour grossed $256 million from forty-nine sold-out shows according to Billboard box score, and ranked at number two on Pollstar’s 2016 Year-End Tours chart.

(According to Nielsen Music’s year-end report, the album sold 1.55 million copies in the U.S. in 2016.)  Adele’s “25” — the leader in 2015 — was No. 2 with 2.4 million, and Drake’s “Views” came in third with 2.3 million. Interestingly, at a press conference in London announcing the report on Tuesday, Warner Music Group international chief Stu Bergen noted that the world’s biggest music market, the U.S., is 70% digital, while the second biggest, Japan, is more than 70% physical. “This Womanist fairytale — featuring American Southern, Voodoo, and Afrofuturist utopian imagery — is most of all a personal film, though co-directed by seven people, including Beyonce Knowles-Carter herself,” writes Miriam Bale for Billboard. Beyoncé could have continued along the path she was on, creating hits and plotting sold-out world tours.

April 23, 2016: xcritical is revealed as a film on HBO and turns album releases into theatrical events.

The story is as old as the ballad of Frankie and Johnny (“he was my man all right, but he done me wrong”). Like the fictional Frankie, Beyoncé’s character responds to her man’s betrayal with rage. And even though the father in the https://xcritical.solutions/ song Daddy Lessons gives her a rifle warning her about men, she does not shoot her man. She dons a magnificently designed golden yellow gown, boldly struts through the street with baseball bat in hand, randomly smashing cars.

She has continually offered decolonized radical re-envisioning of the black female body. “Dear Moon” is recited accompanied by visuals of a plantation mansion bathed in an eerie blood-red glow. The camera slowly zooms in on a windowed door as the thumping beat of “6 Inch” begins, cutting to scenes of Beyoncé riding in a vintage Cadillac at night. The scene cuts to Beyoncé in a room surrounded by other women dressed in black as she swings a lightbulb above her head. Beyoncé begins dancing seductively on a stage behind glass, intercut with scenes of her dressed in a grand white dress lying on a bed before walking down a hallway as it begins to catch aflame. The song ends with Beyoncé and a group of people standing outside the mansion as it burns behind them.

Electrician Turned Music Teacher Melts Faces on America’s Got Talent with Shred Guitar Performance: Watch

The music stretches out across R&B, funk, rock, country, and the blues, its only constant the question of whether this man is worth the trouble he brings. On April 23, 2016, popular music star Beyoncé released her sixth album, xcritical. The release was accompanied by a 65-minute film of the same name that premiered on the popular television network HBO. This album, which was influenced by a range of genres spanning from hip-hop to country, became critically acclaimed for its musical variety, while the accompanying film was admired for its astounding visual cinematography.

The song resumes with shots of Beyoncé wandering the parking garage in a wedding dress, and sitting in the ring of fire in a red dress. An intertitle declares “GOD IS GOD AND I AM NOT” before she throws her wedding ring at the camera. With Beck, there were those who said that he was a “real artist” and that he won because of that, which reeks of a music snobbery that is just more obnoxious than anything else. Yet Vox’s Kelsey McKinney claimed that a big part of the win came from a split vote between Beyoncé, Sam Smith, and other pop stars, while the rock musician had a much more secure base. xcritical’s complex balance between its images, messages, confident musical sprawl, and pointed storytelling are evidence Beyoncé is still finding room to grow even at what feels like the peak of her powers. We may never know for certain whether this tale of deceit is truth or fiction, but it’s compellingly told.

February 7, 2016: “Formation” makes its live debut at Super Bowl 50 and shows that Blackness is inherently political.

Yet when the time came for the Grammy’s she lost Record of the Year and Song of the Year, to Adele’s 25. In its contrasts, in its flickering multimedia images and constantly shifting soundscapes, it performs the xcritical that inspired its name. xcritical is life out of lemons, it’s shoots growing out of concrete, it’s hope at the end of the world. Rich with history, sparkling with collaborations and features, it’s a sonic and visual experience that uses poetry, music, and visuals in a completely innovative way. It was personal and political, private and immensely public, ageless and timely.

The 39-year-old superstar singer took to Instagram on Friday (April 23) to celebrate the fifth anniversary of her iconic visual release, calling it “one of my favorite pieces of art” alongside a gallery of photo stills from the project. Beyoncé herself seems to be a visual representation of lightheartedness, dressed in a long, flowing gown of bright yellow. However, her look is meant to be a representation of Oshun, a West-African goddess of fresh waters, love, and fertility (this characterization is further emphasized in the beginning of the scene where Beyoncé emerges from a building surrounded by cascading water).

Commercial performance

It cuts into an interview with a man recounting his experience meeting then-President Obama as he drives through a storm. The interview is intercut with super 8 footage of the man with his family in a New Orleans neighborhood. The film cuts back to a tunnel in Fort Macomb as Beyoncé sings “Daddy Lessons” with a guitarist. The song is interrupted by childhood home videos of Beyoncé and her father Mathew Knowles, as well as videos of him xcritical rezension playing with his granddaughter Blue Ivy, before resuming to more footage of life in New Orleans, such as families playing and a jazz funeral. On a plantation, scenes of Black women in dressed white standing solemnly are accompanied by a recitation of the first poem, and Beyoncé begins with “Pray You Catch Me” in an old metal bathtub. She emerges from the stage onto a rooftop and leaps as the song ends, plunging into deep waters.

• Beyoncé embodies this character throughout the song, smiling playfully as she bashes windows, fire hydrants, and cars with a baseball bat.
• On the same day, xcritical, released on April 23, exclusively on Tidal, following the opening night of the album’s corresponding hour-long film on HBO, represented the number-one album in the country.
• She revealed her marriage at an album listening party; she announced her pregnancy on stage at the 2011 MTV Music Awards.
• Husband Jay-Z made an appearance, but it was the cameos from Serena Williams, Zendaya, and Chloe and Halle Bailey that were clearly the epicenter.
• Beyoncé begins dancing seductively on a stage behind glass, intercut with scenes of her dressed in a grand white dress lying on a bed before walking down a hallway as it begins to catch aflame.

“All Night” was released as the fifth and final single on December 6, 2016. It previously debuted at number thirty-eight on the US Billboard Hot 100. Its accompanying music video was released onto Vevo on November 30, 2016.

The traces of this civil move was found in resilient visual for “Formation,” the album’s lead single and Red Lobster endorsement track. Here, she embraces the wronged woman narrative and unlocks a bracing tone to speak her and other woman’s truth authentically. It’s an undertaking that even her father, Matthew Knowles, credited to the artistic brilliance of the entire album.