The Beyhive has survived yet another excruciating wait — and the result was a mindblowing work of art showing how far the ‘03 Bonnie and Clyde have both come. It's one thing that fans of The Carters were practically begging for: new music. Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s ingeniously titled Everything Is Love is a nine-track album dealing with love, life and legacy which recalls the sonic elements of what makes Bey and Jay not only musically relevant but musically gifted.
Stream #EverythingIsLove now, exclusively on TIDAL. Also stream a TIDAL-exclusive track. https://t.co/OHRZ7lnF8n
pic.twitter.com/70xd4Box4P— BEYONCÉ (@Beyonce) June 16, 2018
But one thing we should be paying just as much attention to are the visual elements, namely the album's cover. Beyoncé and Jay-Z are known to be iconic, but this is arguably one of the most significant power moves (and an excellent use of their large platform) to date by featuring black dancers Jasmine Harper and Nicholas "$lick" Stewart "candidly" captured in front of a blurred but recognizable Mona Lisa–a historically infamous symbol of standard Eurocentric beauty conventions. The use of an afro pick with the black power fist is the cherry on top of such a beautiful cake.
can I just thinkpiece it for a sec? bc we ain’t talking about this cover enough. not only did they take over the Louvre, but their lead image is of a blurred out Mona Lisa—a high standard for Eurocentric beauty—and highlighted a BW picking a BM’s fro. Black IS beauty. Powerful. pic.twitter.com/KUzY4Bna4J
— FNZ ???? (@fonzfranc) June 17, 2018
One of the most intimate exchanges between black people and one of the most significant expressions of love in any form is precisely what the Carters used as the cover of Everything Is Love. They could have easily been the cover image for their own story, but what the absence of the Carters does is create space to make their conversation a universal one. This is what makes their love so beautiful.
The cover of Everything Is Love transposes an image so ingrained in black culture, so pigeonholed into niche markets, so profoundly exploited, so subdued to inappropriate and often inaccurate connotations, to a space of high art–the Louvre–which symbolizes status so definitively. It's as if to say "we have every right to claim ownership of the spaces you've tried exiling us from."
Though Mona Lisa is iconic for its visual and philosophical merit, how modern society has taken it on as a standard of beauty by European standards is the antithesis of black beauty. Sure, European standards of beauty have evolved since the first brushstrokes of the original da Vinci painting, but still, the "Negro nose and Jackson 5 nostrils" hold significantly more beauty and value than the world wants to recognize.
The choice to blur the Mona Lisa, along with the historical connotations that have come with it, is a subtle one yet a very bold one and gives the album much more depth once you realize it.
Some can even say that the rawness of the album cover runs parallel to the raw honesty with which they sing and rap. It sets you up for the unexpected, which is one way to describe the album regarding its release and its content best.
The overt-yet-covert message of disrupting white physical and metaphysical spaces to make room for the promotion of black love and black beauty takes this album to another level. The Carters continue to remain in control of their narrative and maintain a low profile despite having solar star power.
That's what makes them the perfect pair to highlight the intricacies of their marriage and familial turmoil while letting audiences not only see themselves in the cover art of the album but hear themselves in the lyrical content.
With an album this great, can we even begin to imagine what they have in store for the tour?
