In the militarily planned life of Beyonc? Knowles you wonder how an oversight like this was allowed to happen. How did her second solo album get beyond the planning stage without a single soul gently pointing out to her that, well, that when you abbreviate “birthday” to “B’day”, it reads like a receptacle that people use to wash their bum? This, of course, was not the intention. The fact that it took Chris Moyles to point this out to her suggests that it’s not just the alligators on the back of her CD that walk around with their mouths taped shut.
So next week’s release date coincides with the pre-eminent queen of R&B’s 25th birthday (she probably owns 25 bidets, too). She’s spent ten years refining and defining her brand so it’s pointless to expect much in the way of risktaking. With her two Tommy Hilfiger fragrances and a new clothing line doing brisk business there’s too much at stake for that. But it does at least mean that a Beyonc? album comes with a supporting cast that couldn’t make a stinker if they tried. The Norwegian producers Stargate offer the album’s most poppy moment with a lilting acoustic confection called Irreplaceable.
What intrigues elsewhere, though — especially the propulsive vintage funk of Suga Mama and Ring the Alarm — is the proliferation of woman-scorned lyrics. How can we reconcile the insecure lover of these songs with the invincible fianc?e of Jay-Z? Perhaps an intrinsic part of the Beyonc? brand is the singer’s ability to articulate the insecurities of her huge female fanbase. That would certainly account for Kitty Kat, a tense collision of nimble beats and digitised string bursts in which our the singer declares: “I’m taking back the things I got from you/ And that includes my sweet little nookie too”.
On the phlegm-rattling hysterics of Resentment, she sings, “I know she was attractive/But I was here first”.
Given her impressive use of the word “nookie” on the other song, it’s a shame she didn’t make explicit what amounts to a bagsy here. It certainly would have enlivened what sounds a little too much like a song once mooted for Victoria Beckham’s illfated hip-hop album.
As her 2003 ?berhit Crazy in Love will forever illustrate, Beyonc? is at her best when she’s on the offensive — and B’day is no exception. You can practically hear the slap of a thousand hen nights being applied to a soundtrack of Get Me Bodied and Freakum Dress. No less exciting is Green Light, the mechanised sex-funk workout produced by Neptunes in which Beyonc? brings the time-honoured metaphor of traffic control into the bedroom.
But where, amid all these Beyonc?s, is the real thing? Well, the one that rings truest on here is the one who sings the album’s best song. Upgrade U is no cri de coeur, no woman-scorned chest-beater — rather it’s a chance for her and Jay-Z to reflect on the swelegant lifestyle that comes with being the world’s most powerful pop couple. “I can do for you what Martin (Luther King) did for the people,” she promises, while, with typical modesty, he ponders “How you gon’ upgrade me?/ I retired at number one.”
It’s a salient question, but if they can find it in them to brag about “six-star pentsuites”, you somehow wouldn’t put it past Beyonc? to have a team of crack mathematicians devise an entire new number for her, just so she can occupy it.
RCA