
Beyonce releases ‘Black Is King’ visual album, deluxe ‘The Gift’ LP & “Already” music video
Beyonce has released her new visual album Black Is King, which is based on the music of 2019's The Lion King: The Gift, Beyonce's companion album to the live-action remake of The Lion King (which Bey voices Nala in). The new visual album is streaming exclusively on Disney+ and features full-length videos for the songs “Already,” “Brown Skin Girl,” “Mood 4 Eva” and “My Power,” though Beyonce also released "Already" as a standalone music video which you can watch below.
Beyonce also released a deluxe edition of The Lion King: The Gift, which adds on her recent single "Black Parade" (and the extended version), as well as a Melo-X remix of "Find Your Way Back." Listen to that below too.
For an idea of what to expect from the film, here's an excerpt of Deadline's review:
At the almost dizzying Disney heights, Beyoncé finds herself bluntly tells an America still staggering from the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter floodlight on the realities of systemic racism: “let Black be synonymous with glory.”
[...] Expressively the film’s plot, as it is, takes some Lion King and then weaves a very different Magic Kingdom than Disney fans have been used to for most of the company’s history. Placing a veneration of the Black diaspora and its origin tales at its pillar, the film is awash with depictions of colonialism, racism, economic disparity and ancient deities as a boy is flung Moses-style far from his family to find himself in a toilsome world.
Yet, Beyoncé is also Beyoncé the person, performer and the brand she has so solidly constructed over the decades. So, there’s an army of dancers, a reconstructed Stars and Stripes, some neon, and cameos by the likes of Pharrell Williams, Lupita Nyong’o, Naomi Campbell, and Kelly Rowland. Thematically, female empowerment, motherhood, the signifiers of fashion, the power of voice, and husband Jay-Z and the couple’s two children all make striking appearances too in this latest pastiche from the most nominated woman in Grammy history.
You can read more here.
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