Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar team up for one of the year’s most powerful tracks: “Freedom.”
Some had posited that Beyonce’s “Lemonade” special on HBO would be a documentary. Instead, it was an hour-long film that included a whole album’s worth of new music.
Beyonce’s first-person narrations weaved in and out of new music videos with perfect cohesiveness. It was a “visual album,” and a fantastic way for Bey to release her new music, providing a visual story to all the music on Lemonade, which was released on Tidal immediately after the film ended on HBO.
There are four features on Lemonade: The Weeknd, James Blake, Jack White, and last but not least, Kendrick Lamar, who guests on the track “Freedom,” a glorious political anthem with electric blues production. Kendrick spits revolutionary raps in a verse that grows more impassioned as the marching band drums start to boom with increasing force.
Kendrick finishes by rapping, “Open the streets and watch our beliefs / And when they carve my name inside the concrete I pray it forever reads,” before Beyonce cuts him off and belts out the hook, sounding like the queen of Southern soul: “FREEDOM, FREEDOM, I can’t move.” It’s an arresting track.
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