December 13th Now and Forever to Be Known as Beyday, a Celebration of Excellence, Surprises and…

December 13th Now and Forever to Be Known as Beyday, a Celebration of Excellence, Surprises and Grown-Ass Women

Perhaps you have already been up all night listening to BEYONCÉ, the surprise album that our Queen Mother dropped around midnight. Zero PR build-up, zero stunting, just this immensely commanding, soulful, glossy and witty, coherent but variegated, legitimately hip album to bring Christmas early and erase Megyn Kelly from the face of this earth. She’s brought in features by Drake (the rat-a-tat on this one!), Frank Ocean (the doo-wop ghosts on that one!), BLUE IVY and Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (who delivers a rousing speech on feminism halfway through “***Flawless,” a rework of the syrupy Houston jam “Bow Down”). There’s a surprising and wonderful amount of grit, trap and club bounce in the production as well as the usual quotient of Beyoncé’s rainbow-like vocal soar, and thematically the songs on BEYONCÉ (each accompanied by masterworks of videos! Thank Beysus we can finally free the hundred production assistants who’ve spent the last month locked up in a room of leftover Destiny’s Child merchandise to prevent anything from leaking) create a picture of postfeminist “womanhood” (in quotes because I’m already afraid of the think pieces) that is unapologetic, self-aware, pragmatic, empowered and fu-cking hot as shit.

I’ll calm down now. Just kidding, I’m never going to calm down. Beyoncé figured out a way to make people purchase music on iTunes in 2013. Beyoncé orchestrated a massive drop without a trace of media exhaustion. Beyoncé made 17 music videos and we’re going to watch all of them without having to excuse their aesthetic theory or tsk at their pandering. Beyoncé just sonned literally everyone, and there’s nothing I like more in this world than a woman outshining her partner in a field that he partway built.