It seems like the entire world has something to say about Beyoncé's new visual album, Lemonade. While the Beyhive has been very busy flooding the Instagrams of anyone they think could be "Becky with the good hair," (including but not limited to Rachel Roy and Rachael Ray) with lemon emoji, a lot of celebrities have taken to Twitter to share their reactions to Beyoncé's sixth album. Kerry Washington tweeted she's suffering from a "lemonade hangover." Anna Kendrick's tweeted that she's been "changed." Amandla Stenberg, who appears in Lemonade, may have said it best though with her tweet: "Thank you @Beyonce for reminding us of our strength." But, one celebrity who has been very quiet since the release of Lemonade is Beyoncé's husband, Jay Z.
Despite all of the memes that have speculated and joked about Jay's reaction, IRL he has unsurprisingly stayed mum about his role in the making of Lemonade. And do you really blame the guy? The album speaks so openly about infidelity, even if none of it is true to life, staying quiet may be his best course of action at a time like this — especially, when Beyoncé herself has not confirmed or denied that these lyrics are actually about her own relationship and likely never will. She's instead let us interpret whether lyrics like “Tonight I regret the night I put that ring on,” in songs like "Sorry" are things she's really thought, or just part of the character she has built for this album that deals with a woman deciding whether or not to forgive the man she loves.
On her records, Beyoncé definitely likes to play with reality, which is easy to do since none of us really know Beyoncé. We just know what she wants us to know. This was made evidently clear by her 2013 HBO documentary, Life Is But A Dream, which was less a peek into the life of Bey and more of a long infomercial for a product we already knew we wanted. We all have a vision of who Beyoncé is, and she's fine with that. If anything, it fuels her artistry to take these headlines and intertwine them into the music. This is a woman who made an anthem for unattached women with "Single Ladies" when Jay had very much already put a ring on it. It's her knack for non-response responses that keep us digging for truth, knowing it's a lost cause since she seems to have taken the first rule of Fight Club and put her Beyoncé stamp all over it: The first rule of Beyoncé, is do not talk about Beyoncé.
This is precisely why even if the story of Lemonade is not Beyoncé's own, I'm finding it doubtful that Jay Z will ever respond to Lemonade and the allegations that seem to be made over the course of 12 tracks about him. Because it doesn't really matter what he says, we will continue to believe whatever we want to believe. The mystery continues if he just keeps his mouth shut, or even better, decides to put it in a new song that we can mine for clues.
Beyoncé and Jay Z are constantly making headlines for their relationship — nearly every day, there are rumors about the state of their marriage. The two understand how the media works and have been able to use it to their advantage time and time again. The one moment in their life that seemed to actually catch them off guard was that fight between Solange and Jay Z in the elevator after the 2014 Met Gala.
No one really knows what happened that night, but wouldn't Lemonade be the perfect artistic response to something private, which became public record? Lemonade neither confirms nor denies that's why Solange was ao angry with Jay Z that night while Beyoncé looked on, but it sure makes for a good story. And in the end, that's all Jay and Bey's marriage is for the public. It's a fairytale or a soap opera, or something in-between. For now, the couple seems just fine with letting you believe whatever you like about them — especially when it makes for such good music.
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