I could serve lemons,
but I serve Lemonade.
Right before the 2016 Super Bowl, Beyoncé dropped her earth-shattering single, Formation, and performed it at the Super Bowl halftime show. The performers outfits were made to emulate the Black Panther outfits, and this was just the beginning of Beyoncé’s confrontation of the evident racism that plagues country. With the first forty-eight hours of the single's release, the song was on repeat throughout my little room in the sorority house— it became a national anthem of sorts.
While I thought this song was my new pop anthem, I had not even scratched the surface until I watched the music video (Oh, and the rest of the hour-long visual album). After my first few watch throughs, I was able to recognize that scenes were in New Orleans, and Beyoncé had a clear connection to the area. I knew that she was fighting racism, which was rather timely with the #BlackLivesMatter movement in full swing. But, that’s about all I took in on the first couple of views. But, after I took a closer look at the lyrics and cinematic choices, Beyoncé wanted to tailor this song to not just women or black people in general. She’s talking to the true people of New Orleans, Houston, and the South.
Watch Formation Here
Beyoncé opens Formation standing on a sinking New Orleans Police car and the screen flashes to a police uniform. In this instance, Beyoncé is direct, and Bey takes an initial social stance against police brutality. The unambiguous opener primes the viewers for the controversial video to come. Instantly, I was able to notice that several of the scenes in the video show the aftermath of the devastating Hurricane Katrina. Extreme flooding, broken homes, and distressed individuals capture the screen, and the viewers are able to understand the background context of the video. You can feel that Beyoncé is showing her clear connection to New Orleans, but there is more that meets the eye than the sprinkled police references and the Hurricane Katrina disaster scenes.
Previously, Beyoncé’s race had been questioned by her fans and followers. Is she white? Black? Both? Where’s her family from? As a fellow fan, I was confused too. One thing about Beyoncé is that she isn't a huge talker, so fans are left guessing often times. Like, who's Becky with the good hair? Are you a part of the illuminati? Beyoncé speaks through her music, not through physical speech.
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In Formation, Beyoncé does not stray from her identity as Creole and a Texan. She sings about liking her baby hair and afros, and her negro nose with Jackson Five Nostrils. I was able to readily understand the reference to Jackson Five, but younger generations that follow Beyoncé might have been puzzled by her connection to the famous black singers. She finishes her first stanza with the iconic statement,
“Earned all this money but they never take the country out me, I got a hot sauce in my bag, swag.”
This lyric is especially important because the hot sauce connects her to the notorious spicy food from Texas, and more importantly, this lyric show that she is still connected to her roots in the “country,” which references Texas.
"My daddy Alabama, momma Louisiana. You mix that negro with that Creole make a Texas bamma. I like my baby hair, with baby hair and afros. I like my negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils"
In this same first stanza, Bey sings, “My daddy Alabama, momma Louisiana, you mix that negro with that Creole, make a Texas Bama.” For me, I was luckily enough to have taken French for countless years and I knew that Creole people are heavily concentrated in New Orleans. But, to others, connecting Creole to New Orleans can be moot. For me, “Bama” was where I recognized that I was the outsider of Beyoncé’s conversation in this part of the song. Now, what does “Bama” even mean? I was confused by the reference because her roots are from New Orleans and from Alabama, so did it mean she has a stronger connection to Alabama, which is shortened to “Bama”?
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“Bama,” actually does not refer to her origin at all, but it is a derogatory slang word that I was unaccustomed to. In Jesmyn Ward’s, A Glorification of “Bama” Blackness, the author highlights how the word was originally used to degrade black people who traveled to the North during the Great Migration. Now, “Bama” is used to target black people and imply that they are uneducated, country-originating, ignorant, and lacking sophistication. As a northerner, I was astonished to hear that this word was still used in modern vocabulary. This word originated during slavery, and now we are in 2018 and people still find it acceptable to emit this slur to people? As an outsider to this racism, I did not understand the gravity of Beyoncé cheering about herself as a “bama.” Beyoncé’s lyrics elucidate that she is reclaiming her identity as a “bama.” Beyoncé pushes aside the racist connotations and makes “bama” a prideful word. With just one word, Beyoncé was able to connect to the people who have been referred to as a “bama” and continue to face such blatant racist remarks.
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Now, that's what I call a queen.
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