1” (1999)-she wasn’t yet embracing those themes so openly in 2011, like she’d do in 2014, when she displayed the word “FEMINIST” in the backdrop of a performance at the Video Music Awards (Goodman, 2016).Ĥ was a fundamental record in making feminism a part of Beyoncé’s personal and artistic brand yet, it’s something that can almost go unnoticed (or, at least, might have gone unnoticed back then) in the first 11 tracks. Even if Beyoncé had been singing about female empowerment since her days in Destiny’s Child-via songs like “ Independent Woman, Pt. However, it wasn’t like that yet when she released 4. Nowadays, it’s nearly impossible to dissociate Beyoncé’s art from discussions about feminism (moreover, Black/intersectional feminism) and racial equality. In 4, I found great music and more reasons to admire Beyoncé and keep up with her career yet, I was also left with a lot of questions. I, like many, was a young woman to whom music and pop culture were as much sources of entertainment as they were tools to understand the world. I was that alien, in 2011, when Beyoncé released 4 (although I obviously knew who Beyoncé was back then). (Even if gender was an unfamiliar concept to the alien, they could have learned it from her since she repeats gender pronouns exhaustively throughout the LP, often using possessive pronouns together with the word “man”.) But, change the angle from trying to get to know Beyoncé-a woman and the potential representative of all women on Earth-and the alien would have a harder time forming an opinion. What would they learn about her?Ĭhances are they would think, Wow, this woman really loves her man. Picture this: an alien arrived on Earth in 2011, right when Beyoncé released 4. Thousands of people all over the world were eager to check her new material, and the alien would get to know her solely by judging this album.

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