Her Devotion Weighs A Ton: Beyoncé and Jay-Z's Celebration Of 'Love'
On Saturday, one of the highest-profile and most scrutinized marriages in pop music became an official collaboration with the surprise release of Jay-Z and Beyoncé's album Everything Is Love, credited to The Carters, alongside a video for the album's first single, shot in the Louvre. The album had been rumored since the release of Beyoncé's 2016 album Lemonade and Jay-Z's 4:44, both of which addressed fault lines in the artists' marriage, and in a summer of major hip-hop albums, this instantly marked a new high-water mark. As it does when Beyoncé (and her husband, to a lesser extent) releases something new, the world snapped to attention. NPR Music critics Rodney Carmichael and Ann Powers were among those who spent the days following its release listening to — and thinking about — Everything Is Love. (You can listen to a conversation between Powers, Carmichael and All Things Considered host Audie Cornish by clicking on the audio player below.)
All hail the Queen for turning a bleak American weekend into a joyous Bey Day. I felt a bit of the Markle sparkle when I saw the first video and album art for : Just like that American princess who carried the sanctified church to Windsor Castle, Beyoncé brought her man and her 21st- century Black Arts-informed aesthetic into the Louvre to recast the Western art tradition in a way that feels absolutely necessary right now. I sometimes think Jay and Bey live in a Kehinde Wiley painting; like Barack Obama's presidential portraitist, they're all about exposing the elegance of subjects — including their own home communities and past
