How '4:44' and 'Lemonade' Solidified Vulnerability as an Art
Originally published on www.kesifelton.com
July 5, 2017
After reading several articles about JAY-Z's 4:44 and revisiting my blog post on Lemonade, I want to talk about the idea of vulnerability as an art form. As a listener, I could definitely feel a difference between Beyoncé and Lemonade, Magna Carta and 4:44. The subject matter can be felt in a way that makes you feel as though you experienced it yourself. I am confident that that's what makes good art good and good artists great-- their ability to get an audience to truly empathize with their work. I respect Beyoncé and JAY because of their concerted effort to keep us out of their marriage and give us a glimpse of their lives only with concert visuals, music videos, or Instagram posts that show only Beyoncé can make Flipigrams artistic.
However, even when it seemed like they began to lose their grasp over their concealed public image, they undoubtedly proved us wrong by releasing two of what critics, respectively, are calling their best projects to date. Both 4:44 and Lemonade exemplify the power and poetry that results from owning your truth and making the effort to heal.
JAY-Z puts it perfectly in 4:44's opening track "Kill Jay Z" by saying "You can't heal what you never reveal." These albums can respectively be a lesson for all of us to make more of an effort to deal with our traumas head-on. For Black people specifically, there is an unwritten rule that has been passed down from generation to generation that we have to keep our hurt a secret and deal with it only within the confines of our households if at all. I liked that JAY started with "Kill Jay Z" and explained that it's a song about the death of one's ego because that's often the one thing that keeps us from dealing with our problems honestly and fully.
I can only imagine what it's like to be JAY-Z and deal with the immense pressure from the public and "all the youth that fell in love with Jay Z" to maintain his image. He also talks about the pressure he feels as a father on the title track "4:44," which serves as a lesson about maintaining your perfect image to those who depend on you and apologizing to those people for the hurt you may have caused them on your journey to address and accept your authenticity. If there is anything that I've learned from this album (besides credit being more important than throwing money in the strip club), it's that you have to pursue your truth for those that love you, but even more importantly for you and your peace of mind. In the words of JAY's mother Gloria Carter (which can be heard on "Smile"), "Living two lives, happy, but not free...Living in the shadow feels like a safe place to be/No harm for them, no harm for me/But life is short and it's time to be free."
–kf
Check out this thread of think-pieces and reviews of 4:44 by Black men, my faves are linked below:
Other pieces to read:
