TrueStar Staff 
With her new contemporary film, Beyoncé manages to beautifully capture Black love, Black life, Black culture, and Black excellence.
The film/visual album, Beyoncé’s cinematic ode to her son Sir Carter and Black ancestry, features dazzling cultural dance numbers, shocking song visuals, and spotlights many other POC artists.
Black is King has been highly anticipated since Bey dropped the teaser trailer on July 19th, which makes today an exciting and long-awaited day for many. This latest project was just added to Disney+, joining Hamilton in the site’s collection of musically based films.
Bey has shown us time and time again how skillfully she is able to string together her joy, pain, and passion into poem-like words that she included in her visual albums with past works like the self-titled Beyoncé and Lemonade; but with this film, she presented us with another talent.
The masterfully shot visuals and in-film music videos were directed by the Queen herself over a year across various places in the world including New York, Los Angeles, South Africa, West Africa, London, and Belgium. Black is King was inspired by Bey’s 2019 album titled “Lion King: The Gift” which she produced for the 2019 live-action Lion king movie, the same movie in which she voiced the character of Nala.
Black is King explores Blackness all over the globe–from the roots of it in Africa to the cities in London. Expressing her personal experiences as a Black woman was a prominent theme, yet is nothing new to the artist. In fact, it seems to be something she strives for (Remember the yellow dress and bat in Lemonade?) This time around, however, it seems she meant to display an experience that we as a culture can connect and relate to.
On Instagram, in an uncharacteristically long post from Bey, she wrote “with this visual album I wanted to present elements of Black history and African American tradition with a modern twist and universal message of what it truly means to find your self-identity and build a legacy.” Personally, I feel like Beyoncé accomplished her goal. After watching the film, I have never felt more empowered, proud to be Black, and inspired to take back my history and ancestry, and learn it.
The film celebrates Blackness like a holy gift from our ancestors and seems to bring us all together by if nothing more than our skin and culture. With each new song there seems to be a completely different environment that is still all brought together by one, well, maybe two, common denominators.
Black is King is a love letter, appreciation letter, and a PSA that our culture and ancestry are beautiful even when our history is not.
Now, there’s no doubt that there’s an array of hits in this film like “Mood 4 Eva” that features a guest appearance by hubby Jay-Z and “Already” with spectacular vocal appearances from Ghanaian singer Shatta. But my favorite visual and song was definitely “Brown Skin Girl.”
“Brown Skin Girl” was Bye’s love letter to dark-skinned and brown skin women. I felt a deep connection and appreciation while listening to it right after seeing Lion King for the first time. And if I thought it couldn’t get any better, with beautiful lyrics like “There’s complexity in complexions and your skin shone like diamonds,” I was completely wrong. This scene features beautiful Black debutantes and debutants, the ever-elegant Naomi Campbell, Kelly Rowland, and Lupita Nyong’o (who all were name-dropped in the song). None other than Miss Blue Ivy herself offered her vocals on the track as well as her beauty in the visual.
Beyoncé is only one example of Black excellence, but she’s a powerful one nonetheless. Black is King is a love letter, appreciation letter, and a PSA that our culture and ancestry are beautiful even when our history is not. And though I’ve tried my hardest, you can’t understand the full experience until you’ve watched it yourself. Stream it now on Disney+.
By Kendal Amos, Sophomore, Little Black Pearl
Instagram: Kendal.amos
