Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter has been in my life since 1999 when Destiny’s Child was launched into mainstream recognition. I knew all the words to “Say My Name” and “Bills, Bills, Bills” before I knew how to add and subtract. I have followed Queen Bey through a solo career, a marriage, a pregnancy and all of her controversy without missing a beat.
This single woman had more control over my emotions then I had when I was going through puberty; just imagine a thirteen-year-old black boy balled up on the floor crying uncontrollably listening to “If I Were a Boy” like he was living with the double standard of gender roles in America. I might as well have been a Single Lady trying to get someone to put a ring on it from late 2008 through all of 2009 and do not get me started on how crunk I get whenever “Ring the Alarm” comes on to this day.
Mrs. Carter keeps throwing curve balls at me and in regular Bey fashion dropped the biggest bomb on everyone this weekend simply because she wanted us to get in formation for the blessing we did not even know we needed.
Flashback to Saturday, the sixth of February, the day that all of our wigs were removed because Beyoncé decided to just drop a whole video and single for no reason at all! The way this was done and the reasoning behind it are rooted in some controversy, but know this: her video, after 24 hours, had over 8 million views and the video was UNLISTED on Youtube.
What that means is that you can not Google, Bing, ask Jeeves or call Jesus on the mainline to find this song. You have to have a direct link or Tidal, which no one has because Jay Z thinks we are made of money, to see Formation.
Even with these stipulations, she broke Black Twitter with the utmost ease because she not only made a pro-black banger but touched on police brutality, black female unity, black natural hair, black nostrils and the Katrina aftermath. Bey also incorporated the gay NOLA scene into her video by bringing in Messy Mya (R.I.P.) and Big Freedia and chocolate queens momentarily doing some bounce dances.
The whole song and video was just SO black and just unapologetically southern that it made me miss going to the movies with my friends who carried hot sauce in their purses to put on their popcorn.
Beyoncé allowed me to live in a space I do not get to be in often because I go to a predominantly white institution (PWI), and I basked in the melanin magic thoroughly.
Mrs. Carter was not done yet because the premiere of all this was more systematic than racism in our society. Queen Bey dropped all of this blackness the day before she was scheduled to appear on the Super Bowl with Coldplay and Bruno Mars. Not only was I about to die because Beyoncé was going to slay, but there were rumors she was revealing another new song at the show.
#BeyonceBowl became a worldwide trending topic and I waited patiently for the halftime show. The show started and Coldplay popped up: wasn’t happy. Then Bruno Mars started Uptown Funking and I was indifferent.
And then a single camera change removed my wig AGAIN. Not only was Beyoncé serving unified dance performance gold but all of her backup dancers were dressed as the Black Panther Party. Beyoncé took the pro-black narrative to the next level and floored my entire soul.
Then I realized she was dressed as Michael “The King of Pop” Jackson yelling about Jackson Five nostrils, like what? She was not done though, she was far from done, because all of a sudden I realized I’m going to have to overdraft my bank account to pay for a suprise Formation tour!
At this point I have gone through several wigs, my heart can not take anymore surprises and I am preparing to file bankruptcy over a concert. I learn Jay Z is giving 1.5 million dollars to the #blacklivesmatter movement and the Formation tour will provide money to the Flint Water Crisis which is the cherry on top of the blackest sundae since Huey P Newton and Bobby Seale started the Black Panthers. Hashtags like #beingablackgirlislit and #Islay became common knowledge, and I was so busy praising all my black sisters in their excitement that I missed the backlash until February 8.
Negative comments included white erasure (something people of color, especially women of color, have dealt with since the creation of this country in every media source/company you can think of), reverse racism (which will forever not be real no matter how much people say it is), claims that the song was an attack on the police (when did a black woman talking about Red Lobster kill a police officer?) and criticisms of being proud of being black.
Regardless, Beyoncé made, in my opinion, the best song in her repertoire. All the Fox News reporters can complain and bash Beyoncé for being black, like she actually is, and loving every bit of it, like the Black Panthers did, without disenfranchising anyone. The problem with all the criticism that this takeover encountered was that it was rooted in white supremacy ideologies.
Your international pop star did not include all the girls because she wanted the melanin to radiate for once. Not everything is for everyone and that’s okay.
So you can complain all you want to but you’re eventually going to fall in formation for Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter, the mixture of negro and creole, the queen of pop, the snatcher of wigs and the reason I can say I’m a black Bill Gates in the making. She’s welcome.
By the way, for anybody who thinks this song did not do anything for anyone, Red Lobster’s sales skyrocketed after Beyonce’s “Formation” shout out. Boom!
