The Carters - Everything Is Love
Pitchfork 82
The Carters round out a trilogy of confrontational albums about their marriage with something lighter but no less resonant. It is a celebration of resilient black love and proud black extravagance.
Tue Jun 19 05:00:00 GMT 2018The Guardian 80
(Roc Nation)
Following Beyoncé’s explosive revelation of her husband’s infidelity on Lemonade and Jay-Z’s repentant, introspective 4:44, Everything Is Love is the final album in a trilogy documenting married life. Born out of therapy-like recording sessions, it marks the pair’s first full-length collaboration, but listeners hoping for detail on their reconciliation might be disappointed: this is curated veneer, not ugly exposition.
The “love” here is less rooted in their relationship as in love of newfound stability, of being able to luxuriate in their wealth and enjoy their family and the summer weather. Perhaps as much as any of these things, it’s a celebration of their love of hip-hop: Beyoncé spends most of the nine tracks effortlessly spitting rather than singing and the release is teeming with rap references, be it imitating the choppy flow of featured artists Migos on Apeshit or the glorious nod to Still D.R.E. on 713. Things feel all the sweeter knowing how hard they fought to get here: through relationship troubles and against the systemic racism Jay alludes to throughout. It might lack urgency, but it’s an accomplished, glossy finale.
Continue reading... Sun Jun 24 07:00:20 GMT 2018Drowned In Sound 70
“No need to ask you heard about us/Already know you know about us”, sings Beyoncé over a plangent electric piano in ‘Heard About Us’. Despite being one of the most uncomplicated examples of celeb-style braggadocio on Everything Is Love, the debut album by Bey and Jay-Z as The Carters, the two verses get to the core of the matter: what is left to know about the Carters’ marital saga and their unchanging rep as the wealthiest and almightiest couple in the music business? Do they even need us to know more?
Artistically and thematically speaking, Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Jay-Z’s 4:44 were tough acts to follow. In Lemonade Beyoncé transformed the couple’s struggle with betrayal/trust into a gripping plot full of unexpected turns, sonic experimentations and powerful reflections on black womanhood and structural racism that linked the personal with the urgently political. Aided by No I.D.’s retro-tinged productions and acrobatic sampling work, 4:44 turned out to be Hov’s best record in years, not so much a response to Lemonade as an honest and reflective assessment of his achievements as a rapper, husband, father and ubiquitous businessman.
Furthermore, the two records exhausted, at least in part, the narrative potential behind their ‘family feud’: Lemonade concluded with forgiveness, while in 4:44, Jay-Z delivered his much-talked about apology to Beyoncé for his infidelity. With less drama to play around with, Everything Is Love sets out to document the vow renewal, ‘love wins’ phase of their marriage.
A handful of tracks happen to do so in hyper-congratulatory ways, stressing the central role played by wealth and ostentation in the economy of the record to rather exhausting effect. In contrast to the ominous, yet drowsy tones of ‘Heard About Us’, ‘Boss’ is a joyous, if ultimately tedious march, embellished by smooth choirs, spacious beats and celebratory horns, nothing in the way of the couple’s boastful considerations: “Got that dinero on my mind”, says B, “It’s disturbing what I gross”, synthesizes Jay-Z. Pharell helps the Carters translating this sense of directionless bragging in ‘Nice’, which he co-wrote and contributes a verse to. The song’s repetitive chants (“I can do anything, yeah” ) and its piano, tinkling in slow-motion, almost seem to exasperate the plenitude of the couple’s success, which, says Bey, can’t simply “be quantified”. For all their untouchability goals, the Carters’ delivery lacks enough vigour to keep the track afloat.
Luckily, in most of the tracks, the Carters recuperate a sense of purpose: when they do, they come out of their shell in great style. Breezy opener ‘Summer’ imagines a sex-fueled escape to a remote beach. Accompanied by a live band (featuring members of New York’s Daptone label) recreating a majestic Sixties soul feel, Beyoncé’s vocals are simply stunning: oscillating between the ethereal and the perturbed, they suggest an ambiguous feeling, much more mysterious than mere abandon. In his verse, Jay-Z helps us visualise the glorious trip (“I brought my sand to the beach”, “I don’t have no concept of time/Even with a rose gold Concept on me”), only to put luxury into perspective and reminisce about his fear of gunfights in the Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, where he grew up. In the triumphant closing track ‘Lovehappy’, Bey reprises the beach motive, overcoming her fears with hope ( “This beach ain’t always been no paradise/But nightmares only last one night”), but it’s her hilarious tradeoff with Jay-Z which stands out: “You fucked up the first stone, we have to get remarried”, “Lucky I ain’t kill you when I met that B…”
The fact that Everything Is Love leans more on the hip-hop side of things allows for the greatness of ‘Bey the rapper’ to not only show, but to just plain dominate the best tracks, from her cutting, auto-tuned reflections on the couple’s friends being better than yours on the twitchy, trap-oriented ‘Friends’, to her breakneck rhyming on the excellent ‘Apeshit’, where Offset and Quavo, credited as co-writers with Pharell, contribute their signature accents. On ‘713’, a hymn to Beyoncé’s Houston and the couple’s roots, her take on the chorus from Dre and Snoop Dogg’s ‘Still D.R.E.’ (originally co-written by Jay-Z himself) is an absolute joy. ‘Black Effect’, driven by a wondrous sample of ‘Broken Strings’ by Seventies psychedelic outfit Flower Travellin’ Band, sees the two at their most incendiary, addressing police brutality and systemic racism in America (“Put your hands where I can see them, fuck a false arrest”), referencing the Sixties civil rights movement, calling out cultural appropriation and celebrating black history in the process. Jumping across time and between memory and commentary (“I’m good anywhere I go, I pull up like the Freedom Riders, hop out on rodeo/Stunt your curls, your lips, Sarah Baartman hips”, raps Beyoncé), here the Carters exchange their most inspired, fast-paced verses without losing focus for a second.
In the outro to ‘Lovehappy’, Beyoncé sings: “We came, and we conquered, now we’re happy in love”. The line perfectly encapsulates the overarching message and the spirit behind the record, but it’s only half the story. There’s a sense of immediacy and even unpredictability in the most restless moments on Everything In Love, which saves the album from being a rather static and defiant contemplation of The Carters’ victories.
Wed Jun 27 15:36:20 GMT 2018Tiny Mix Tapes 30
The Carters
EVERYTHING IS LOVE
[Roc Nation; 2018]
Rating: 1.5/5
Several publications have said that EVERYTHING IS LOVE is the finale of a trilogy of albums that also includes Beyoncé’s Lemonade and JAY-Z’s 4:44. It’s true, but the trilogy isn’t about marital triumph; no, it details the despair and the gradual flattening of a once-interesting relationship. Unlike other penetrating relationship sagas — Richard Linklater’s The Before Trilogy comes to mind — EVERYTHING IS LOVE is about the veneer of a successful marriage, and it plays like a press release, a publicity stunt designed to communicate to the world how great Beyoncé and JAY-Z are doing. In other words, this album plays less like an artwork and more like an advertisement for the lives of its creators and the world they live in.
Everything about EVERYTHING IS LOVE feels superficial, from the artists’ constant pronouncement of their love for each other to their engagement with topics like fashion, art, watches (this gets its own category), social issues, how great their friends are, sports, and, indeed, their own lives. The most boring aspect of the album is its centerpiece: the couple’s obsession with their wealth. In their relentless discussion of their finances and the things they own, they lose the magic that threads through so many other fantastic rap songs about money and the things money can buy. In most rap, there’s a degree of irony or at least authentic pride in one’s money and success, with the artist feeling that they’ve worked hard to transform their life for the better. This is one of the reasons that rap has always been deeply intertwined with the neoliberal fantasy that money and upward mobility can transform the quality of our lives. Many of those songs are interesting and sometimes even encourage critical reflection; the billionaire JAY-Z’s lyrics about his assets, which basically read as an itemized list of purchases that should have gone to his accountant instead of winding up here, are extremely dull and legitimately unrelatable because of how one-note they are. There’s no depth here, nothing to invite us to actually think about his and Beyoncé’s experiences as rich people.
Beyoncé’s “APESHIT” line “Bought him a jet/ Shut down Colette/ Philippe Patek/ Get off my dick” just feels lazy, as does JAY-Z’s “713” chorus, “Cash, hit deposit, 24-carat faucets/ Louis V and Goyard trunks all in the closet/ Ain’t shit change, the streets is still watchin’/ And my little baby Blue is like ‘Who gon’ stop us, huh?’” In “BOSS,” it’s “Hundred million crib, three million watch, all facts.” This isn’t even inspiring in a neoliberal way — it feels like walking through a store that’s too expensive for you to be in. As we’ve heard from countless other rappers, money does not make everything better. Future’s half a million on a coupe needs to be coupled by enough pink mollies that he can barely move. Kanye’s hundred grand has to go to hospital bills instead of a watch — money ruins his relationships, it turns his best friends to opps. Haters come out of the woodwork for Dr. Dre when he can finally afford to provide his family with groceries. It’s mo money, mo problems, not mo money, no problems. EVERYTHING IS LOVE is music by, for, and about rich people who are guided by the belief that money cures alienation.
For Beyoncé and JAY-Z, everything is experienced through the lens of money. This is how they see art, which becomes reduced to private property, a set piece, a status symbol. Everything that’s potentially meaningful about art becomes lost for them, whether it’s in JAY-Z’s tepid listing of artists in “Picasso Baby” (from Magna Carta Holy Grail) and his subsequent performance art takeover of New York City’s Pace Gallery, or the “APESHIT” video, which essentially amounts to being the most elaborate museum selfie in history. Indeed, like many today, they care more about who stands before an artwork than what the artwork itself is trying to tell us. The Carters’ fetishization of art and its museums is emblematic of their commitment to the status quo. Art is supposed to be thought about, contemplated, criticized — it’s supposed to point toward ways that we can live better lives. To simply put it on the shelf and take photos of it is to affirm all the history that’s gone into its creation and to recognize none of the social issues that it once aspired to give voice to and change. To be sure, this is also a condemnation of museum culture in general, which the “APESHIT” video glorifies, uncritically, to no end.
The Carters work so hard to sell their problem-free life that it almost feels dystopian. “SUMMER” is a lush, maudlin song about going on vacation and having sex, where Beyoncé and JAY-Z purvey the magnificent feeling that they’re the only people in the world, hiding in the hills and among the sheep, losing track of time. “I don’t have no concept of time/ Even with a rose gold Concept on me,” JAY-Z assures us. Isolated, these notions and activities would seem romantic, but it’s a feeling that threads through the entire album. Their world is deeply solipsistic, a place where nobody else exists, even in “713,” a supposed homage track that ends up shoehorning references to Beyoncé’s hometown (Houston, TX) between romantic reveries of trips to Cancun, Saint-Tropez, and Rome. If this album is supposed to be about love, it feels secondary. It feels more about partitioning, about JAY-Z and Beyoncé sectioning themselves off from everyone else, making us painfully aware of how different they are from us. But is it lonely at the top?
“My friends, real friends, better than your friends,” Beyoncé sings in “FRIENDS.” “That’s how we keep poppin’ out that Benz, yeah/ No foes, real friends, we ain’t even got to pretend, yeah.” JAY-Z boasts, “I’m pullin’ up on my dog, make sure he okay, I don’t even have time/ He copped me a Porsche with butterscotch seats/ This ‘fore they had meals/ Life better than rappers and they don’t even have deals/ That real.” Nothing feels emotional about these experiences; they read like obligations and transactions, a tale of stoic hangouts set to a weirdly melancholy beat, one that never really justifies its existence. It’s no secret that JAY-Z and Kanye have been beefing for a while now, and I presume “FRIENDS” is a passive-aggressive response to Kanye’s “Real Friends,” a pretty interesting and sad song where Kanye explores his bad relationships in light of his own failures: “Who your real friends? We all came from the bottom/ I’m always blamin’ you, but what’s sad, you not the problem,” he raps. Even the real-talk moments of EVERYTHING IS LOVE feel contrived and flashy, those passages where infidelity and commitment are actually brought up, as if The Carters are working overtime to avoid dealing with anything negative at all. By comparison, Lemonade and 4:44 read like sessions with Freud himself, and that’s depressing.
There are some fine moments in this album, too. JAY-Z sounds hungry and focused when he enters in “APESHIT” with “I’m a gorilla in the fuckin’ coupe/ Finna pull up in the zoo/ I’m like Chief Keef meet Rafiki/ Who’s been lyin’ “King” to you?” His flow through the song is one of his best in years, even if the rest of the song feels like a mishmash. Beyoncé is vocally intoxicating in “FRIENDS,” and her rhythm and her bars are good throughout, in a technical way. Listening to her sing is always a treat. But overall, the songs and their beats feel too produced. No, that’s not the right word — they feel too calculated. By the time “LOVEHAPPY” rolls around, with the couple talking about how rich their kids are going to be and assuring us that they’re still perfect for each other, it seems like not much at all has changed, that nothing meaningful has really been revealed. But what else would you expect from people with $3 million watches and no concept of time?
Tiny Mix Tapes 30
The Carters
EVERYTHING IS LOVE
[Roc Nation; 2018]
Rating: 1.5/5
Several publications have said that EVERYTHING IS LOVE is the finale of a trilogy of albums that also includes Beyoncé’s Lemonade and JAY-Z’s 4:44. It’s true, but the trilogy isn’t about marital triumph; no, it details the despair and the gradual flattening of a once-interesting relationship. Unlike other penetrating relationship sagas — Richard Linklater’s The Before Trilogy comes to mind — EVERYTHING IS LOVE is about the veneer of a successful marriage, and it plays like a press release, a publicity stunt designed to communicate to the world how great Beyoncé and JAY-Z are doing. In other words, this album plays less like an artwork and more like an advertisement for the lives of its creators and the world they live in.
Everything about EVERYTHING IS LOVE feels superficial, from the artists’ constant pronouncement of their love for each other to their engagement with topics like fashion, art, watches (this gets its own category), social issues, how great their friends are, sports, and, indeed, their own lives. The most boring aspect of the album is its centerpiece: the couple’s obsession with their wealth. In their relentless discussion of their finances and the things they own, they lose the magic that threads through so many other fantastic rap songs about money and the things money can buy. In most rap, there’s a degree of irony or at least authentic pride in one’s money and success, with the artist feeling that they’ve worked hard to transform their life for the better. This is one of the reasons that rap has always been deeply intertwined with the neoliberal fantasy that money and upward mobility can transform the quality of our lives. Many of those songs are interesting and sometimes even encourage critical reflection; the billionaire JAY-Z’s lyrics about his assets, which basically read as an itemized list of purchases that should have gone to his accountant instead of winding up here, are extremely dull and legitimately unrelatable because of how one-note they are. There’s no depth here, nothing to invite us to actually think about his and Beyoncé’s experiences as rich people.
Beyoncé’s “APESHIT” line “Bought him a jet/ Shut down Colette/ Philippe Patek/ Get off my dick” just feels lazy, as does JAY-Z’s “713” chorus, “Cash, hit deposit, 24-carat faucets/ Louis V and Goyard trunks all in the closet/ Ain’t shit change, the streets is still watchin’/ And my little baby Blue is like ‘Who gon’ stop us, huh?’” In “BOSS,” it’s “Hundred million crib, three million watch, all facts.” This isn’t even inspiring in a neoliberal way — it feels like walking through a store that’s too expensive for you to be in. As we’ve heard from countless other rappers, money does not make everything better. Future’s half a million on a coupe needs to be coupled by enough pink mollies that he can barely move. Kanye’s hundred grand has to go to hospital bills instead of a watch — money ruins his relationships, it turns his best friends to opps. Haters come out of the woodwork for Dr. Dre when he can finally afford to provide his family with groceries. It’s mo money, mo problems, not mo money, no problems. EVERYTHING IS LOVE is music by, for, and about rich people who are guided by the belief that money cures alienation.
For Beyoncé and JAY-Z, everything is experienced through the lens of money. This is how they see art, which becomes reduced to private property, a set piece, a status symbol. Everything that’s potentially meaningful about art becomes lost for them, whether it’s in JAY-Z’s tepid listing of artists in “Picasso Baby” (from Magna Carta Holy Grail) and his subsequent performance art takeover of New York City’s Pace Gallery, or the “APESHIT” video, which essentially amounts to being the most elaborate museum selfie in history. Indeed, like many today, they care more about who stands before an artwork than what the artwork itself is trying to tell us. The Carters’ fetishization of art and its museums is emblematic of their commitment to the status quo. Art is supposed to be thought about, contemplated, criticized — it’s supposed to point toward ways that we can live better lives. To simply put it on the shelf and take photos of it is to affirm all the history that’s gone into its creation and to recognize none of the social issues that it once aspired to give voice to and change. To be sure, this is also a condemnation of museum culture in general, which the “APESHIT” video glorifies, uncritically, to no end.
The Carters work so hard to sell their problem-free life that it almost feels dystopian. “SUMMER” is a lush, maudlin song about going on vacation and having sex, where Beyoncé and JAY-Z purvey the magnificent feeling that they’re the only people in the world, hiding in the hills and among the sheep, losing track of time. “I don’t have no concept of time/ Even with a rose gold Concept on me,” JAY-Z assures us. Isolated, these notions and activities would seem romantic, but it’s a feeling that threads through the entire album. Their world is deeply solipsistic, a place where nobody else exists, even in “713,” a supposed homage track that ends up shoehorning references to Beyoncé’s hometown (Houston, TX) between romantic reveries of trips to Cancun, Saint-Tropez, and Rome. If this album is supposed to be about love, it feels secondary. It feels more about partitioning, about JAY-Z and Beyoncé sectioning themselves off from everyone else, making us painfully aware of how different they are from us. But is it lonely at the top?
“My friends, real friends, better than your friends,” Beyoncé sings in “FRIENDS.” “That’s how we keep poppin’ out that Benz, yeah/ No foes, real friends, we ain’t even got to pretend, yeah.” JAY-Z boasts, “I’m pullin’ up on my dog, make sure he okay, I don’t even have time/ He copped me a Porsche with butterscotch seats/ This ‘fore they had meals/ Life better than rappers and they don’t even have deals/ That real.” Nothing feels emotional about these experiences; they read like obligations and transactions, a tale of stoic hangouts set to a weirdly melancholy beat, one that never really justifies its existence. It’s no secret that JAY-Z and Kanye have been beefing for a while now, and I presume “FRIENDS” is a passive-aggressive response to Kanye’s “Real Friends,” a pretty interesting and sad song where Kanye explores his bad relationships in light of his own failures: “Who your real friends? We all came from the bottom/ I’m always blamin’ you, but what’s sad, you not the problem,” he raps. Even the real-talk moments of EVERYTHING IS LOVE feel contrived and flashy, those passages where infidelity and commitment are actually brought up, as if The Carters are working overtime to avoid dealing with anything negative at all. By comparison, Lemonade and 4:44 read like sessions with Freud himself, and that’s depressing.
There are some fine moments in this album, too. JAY-Z sounds hungry and focused when he enters in “APESHIT” with “I’m a gorilla in the fuckin’ coupe/ Finna pull up in the zoo/ I’m like Chief Keef meet Rafiki/ Who’s been lyin’ “King” to you?” His flow through the song is one of his best in years, even if the rest of the song feels like a mishmash. Beyoncé is vocally intoxicating in “FRIENDS,” and her rhythm and her bars are good throughout, in a technical way. Listening to her sing is always a treat. But overall, the songs and their beats feel too produced. No, that’s not the right word — they feel too calculated. By the time “LOVEHAPPY” rolls around, with the couple talking about how rich their kids are going to be and assuring us that they’re still perfect for each other, it seems like not much at all has changed, that nothing meaningful has really been revealed. But what else would you expect from people with $3 million watches and no concept of time?