5 Years of ‘Beyoncé’

5 Years of ‘Beyoncé’

Five years ago today, Beyoncé released her self-titled fifth studio album, and nothing was the same. In an extravagant display of pop clout, Beyoncé released a 14-track visual album with zero promotion. As she sings on her collabo with Nicki Minaj (“Feeling Myself”), the world literally stopped.

Following the release of her fourth album, 4, it appeared that Bey’s star power was waning. She was still a major player in the game, but it wasn’t quite like before. Gaga was doing her thing; Rihanna was doing her thing; Taylor Swift was doing her thing; Katy Perry was doing her thing; heck, Adele was doing the fuck outta hers. This isn’t to say that there isn’t room for all of them (or that any of these women are in her lane), I’m just pointing how unique 2011 was as far as female dominance in the music industry. Beyoncé, though the superior talent by far, wasn’t running things quite like before.

Months after 4‘s release, she’d give birth to her first child, Blue Ivy Carter. She went relatively quite (as one would expect) and said nothing about future releases. There were reports about collabos with everyone from Miguel to Frank Ocean, but no conrete details. We also saw pics of her at Coney Island — we’d later find out it was the “XO” video shoot — but we never got any explanations.

We were all going on about our lives, then one glorious day in December 2013, she destroyed us. The music on the album was great, but that almost didn’t matter. The scale and secrecy of the project was mind-blowing.

The Beyoncé album also marked the legend’s withdrawal for the chart race. By giving all tracks the single treatment (all at once), she essentially made them all less viable for high chart positions. “Drunk in Love” (featuring Jay-Z), which was sent to radio days after the album’s release, peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, but no other single cracked the top 10 — and that didn’t matter. The album’s impact was so great that the statistics became somewhat less relevant.

By taking an unorthodox approach to releasing her music, Bey not only reinforced her place in the game, she injected some much-needed excitement into the music industry. And by having a video to go with each track, she forced audiences to enjoy the album as a body of work, as opposed to cherry-picking whatever tracks are being raved about, which is what happens in this day of social media and single-track downloads.

Beyoncé sold over five million copies worldwide and won three Grammys — the Recording Academy fucked her over to give Album of the Year to an artist who hasn’t had a hit since ’95, but it’s all good. The legacy of the Beyoncé — which is evidenced by the spike in surprise album releases — is bigger than a Grammy.

My favorite track from that album is “Partition.” Watch the video below.