The Gift is truly a great album that had a very wrong first single that didn't represent the album at all, and so people have the wrong idea for the album.
Black Is King arguably has her very best visuals to date. I probably only have a few days left to be able to say this with relative confidence.
The Gift is an amazing alberm. Perfect segue to Renaissance from Lemonade. A shame she didn't release ANY physicals for it. BEYSUS, please.
Now having just achieved 61 weeks, Beyoncé now claims 2nd place (behind Mariah) in having the most cumulative weeks at #1 on the Hot 100 as a female artist, combined with her time in Destiny's Child. All of her #1s as a lead artist have achieved multiple weeks atop the chart. 'Break My Soul' has now surpassed 800k RIAA units, and will likely go platinum by early September. 'Alien Superstar' and 'Cuff It' have both surpassed 200k.
I hate to admit that it took me a second like a year but The Gift is absolutely a great Beyoncé album. It’s bops on bops, and as always with Mum, it’s pretty different to anything she’s done before. I even like Spirit as the big finale.
The Gift is good not great, mainly because it’s too tied to Lion King. It’s influence is all over this record though.
The Gift is a great soundtrack record. It is not a great Beyoncé record. The sounds she experimented with she definitely perfected on Renaissance. The visuals ate though. There are so many gorgeous references throughout.
I thought this the first time I heard “MOVE” and I will be honestly disappointed if she doesn’t do a medley of “MOVE” and “MY POWER” or, at the very least, reference it on tour.
We'd never get it, but a hits, Renaissance in full, a couple more hits, end style show for me, well, it would be my dream. But she has two more albums coming, we'll be lucky if we get half
The way it's taken me over two weeks to catch up on this thread. I was away the weekend it was released and before I knew it I was like 150 pages behind dd. The album is obviously brilliant - it's new and different but you can also see the threads of Dangerously In Love and B'Day, all the way up to The Gift. I love how most of the songs flow together, it's so well done. Alien Superstar is that bitch. Cozy and All Up In Your Mind probably round out my top 3, but Cuff It has grown on me massively too. It's probably the most GP friendly song on the album, but also a stone cold bop. We just reaching out to the solar system We flying over bullshit, we flying over Supernatural love up in the air I just talk my shit, Casanova, superstar, supernova Power, pull 'em in closer If that's your man, then why he over here? (Unique) The best part of the whole damn album? Maybe so.
The Gift is great. Find Your Way Back is one of my favorite Beyoncé songs in particular, there’s something almost magical about it.
I dunno... I kinda gave up when the premise of the article started to look like Beyonce getting praised for her work was a result of image-building rather than due to the quality of her output. Not to mention that within the first couple of paragraphs they say that her Coachella set became an HBO special (instead of Netflix)...it seems like basic fact-checking would be the bare minimum for that sort of article.
I'm saving this for later but I do think the Super Bowl 2013 laid the work for Self-Titled to cement it. That's when The Idea Of Beyonce became what it is, to ME. for ME.