How can I watch Lemonade? Did Jay Z cheat on Beyoncé? Who is ‘Becky with the good hair’? Are Jay Z and Beyoncé even married? It’s not too late to catch up

By now, as a person who breathes oxygen and sometimes does so while browsing the internet, you will know that Beyoncé has put out a new album, Lemonade. A week after its release, that may well be all you know.



Don’t worry. The tens of thousands of words on the subject may have led you to believe otherwise, but it’s not too late to catch up, even if you last remember Beyoncé looking so crazy right now in denim shorts. (Which was, er, 13 years ago.)

Here’s what you need to know to get through the coming days – possibly weeks – of Lemonade analysis, broken down by your level of interest, commitment or nigh-on total lack of either.

Entry level: you are aware there is a musician and public figure “Beyoncé”

Lemonade is Beyoncé’s sixth album: 12 tracks, accompanied by an hour-long film, which premiered in the United States on Saturday on HBO. It is available only on the streaming service Tidal or for purchase through iTunes. It will likely be on Apple Music and Spotify in time, but for now you’re best off signing up for a free Tidal trial.

Released with next to no advance warning, Lemonade is said to have “disrupted” the “album cycle”, but Beyoncé first did this in 2013 when she put out 14 songs, each with its own video, with not even so much as a “save the date”. It’s more accurate to say that there is no album cycle.

But when Beyoncé is walking down a street demolishing parked cars with a baseball bat, you’re not going to be talking about that at the pub.

As you’ll have likely heard, Lemonade is about infidelity. In Don’t Hurt Yourself, she throws her wedding ring at the camera while snarling a “final warning”: “If you try that shit again, you’re going to lose your wife.”

Tracy Clayton (@brokeymcpoverty) jayz at the #lemonade listening party like pic.twitter.com/5kDR7cMPLe

It’s heavy stuff, made amusing by the myriad resultant memes of her husband, the rapper-mogul Jay Z, looking stricken. But his appearance with their daughter, Blue Ivy, at the end of the film – and the softening tone of its latter half – suggests Lemonade is not a critically acclaimed divorce announcement.

Rather more poignantly, it’s about the experience of black women, “the most disrespected person in America”, to quote Beyoncé quoting Malcolm X in the feature film. The title is drawn from Jay Z’s grandmother, who is shown in the film at her 90th birthday party: “I was given lemons and I made lemonade.”



Now that we find ourselves at the intersection of the tabloids concerned with whether or not Jay Z cheated and, if so, with whom, and the “writerly” press close-reading the lyrics, you can stop reading and still seem informed on the subject if – when – it crops up at the weekend.

But if you fear being pushed further into the Beyhive – the name given to “the Queen’s” fanbase – and coming up short, read on.

Level one: you can broadly approximate the Single Ladies dance

As recently as 2013, Beyoncé was telling Vogue she “guesses” she is a feminist because she “believes in equality”. A year later, she performed at the MTV Music awards in front of “FEMINIST” in lights.

Just as sampling Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk established Beyoncé’s credentials as a public feminist, her Superbowl Halftime Show – when she sang about her “negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils”, flanked by dancers wearing Black Panther berets, concluding with a Black Power salute – signalled a newly politicised chapter of her career.

(Her performance of the song Formation at the Superbowl prompted a protest against the musician and the NFL – which she’s referenced in her new merchandise line. “Your best revenge is your paper,” as its lyric goes.)

Beyoncé Australia (@BeyonceAUS) Beyoncé is selling BOYCOTT BEYONCÉ t-shirts as tour merch 😂 pic.twitter.com/zjD3HcV7XG

Beyoncé’s “going all political” comes much to the dismay of Piers Morgan, who reminisced in a column in the Daily Mail about a simpler time when the pair of them enjoyed scones. Honestly, you don’t need a link – the title (“Jay Z’s not the only one who needs to be nervous about Beyonce, the born-again black woman with a political mission”) is enough.

Level two: you coughed up for tickets to the Mrs Carter world tour and one item of merchandise

Lemonade the film is far more explicitly about race – and specifically, the experience of black women – than the music it accompanies. At about 60 minutes long, it’s more a short feature than a music video in terms of production and vision (Variety reports that HBO will submit it for Emmy consideration).

It features the work of British-Somali poet Warsan Shire; the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, holding photographs of their dead sons; and cameos from Serena Williams and a number of young, black celebrities, such as Zendaya, Amandla Stenberg and Quvenzhané Wallis.

Its impact was clear from the response on Twitter, where the #LEMONADE hashtag was fuelled by expressions of joy and almost gobsmacked disbelief at such a high-profile piece of art made by black women, for black women.

Jenna //\\ Wortham (@jennydeluxe) Main thought on Lemonade: It's about lifting up the experiences of black woman, who are largely invisible in this country & the world 👭🍋✨

Trudy (@thetrudz) Womanism. Through and through. That's what this is. I feel all the foremothers and ancestors on this. And still specifically her. #Lemonade

Janet Mock (@janetmock) Serena Williams. Quvenzhané Wallis. Amandla Stenberg. Sybrina Fulton. Lesley McSpadden. Zendaya. Black women in formation for #LEMONADE!

Before the hashtag was co-opted by brands and spam, Twitter users who were not black women were encouraged to listen. This prompted some grumbling about “not being allowed” to talk about Lemonade, particularly from men – who might not have felt moved to comment on a Beyoncé album at all, had they not been told that what they said didn’t matter.

“White people can recognise things in Lemonade and take those parts for themselves, while recognising they are not the audience,” one Twitter user said. “Just like black women have been doing with most pop culture for years.”

Level three: you have seen the HBO Beyoncé-produced “documentary” about Beyoncé, Life is but a Dream

The attention Beyoncé notoriously pays to her image (GQ reports she has every existing photograph of herself in a climate-controlled storage facility in her office; she reportedly has a rule about never appearing under blue light) is often dismissed as “diva” behaviour. This is partly because of stereotypes about powerful women and partly because of a song in which Beyoncé said she was a diva nearly 40 times.

Either way, you don’t get to be the biggest pop star in the world by not paying attention to what’s being said about you – and Beyoncé knows just how much to give away.

Beyoncé's Lemonade is about much more than Jay Z and infidelity | Ijeoma Oluo Read more

For someone who has given only a handful of interviews since 2013, who is known to be intensely protective of her private life, we sure know a lot about it. She revealed her marriage at an album listening party; she announced her pregnancy on stage at the 2011 MTV Music Awards.

When Lemonade seems to offer an unfettered view into her personal life, it’s possible – even prudent – to wonder what’s being obscured. Its apparent authenticity is its selling point, writes Pitchfork’s senior editor Jillian Mapes – “but there’s a quality to it that also invites skepticism: that desire to basically art-direct your own sobbing self-portrait”.

Who is “Becky with the good hair”, cited by Beyoncé as “the other woman” in Sorry – fashion designer Rachel Roy? Rita Ora? Does she even exist? Did Jay Z cheat on Beyoncé? Is their marriage a contractual agreement quantified in guest verses, public appearances, and world tours? Could Blue Ivy be a hologram?

The suggestion that Jay Z and Beyoncé came up with the album’s narrative together appeals, if only because of the imagined dinner-table conversations chez Carter-Knowles. But as Mapes concludes – “who cares what’s ‘real’”. With Lemonade’s penultimate track, All Night Long, Beyoncé seems to be giving the go-ahead to their union – whatever its terms may be.

Will Miles (@MrWillMiles) Jay Z: so how does it start?



Beyoncé: well first I'm going to throw shade pretty directly at you pic.twitter.com/27ePOaVlyd

Master level: you’re a fully paid-up member of the Beyhive

The critical thought prompted by Lemonade is only a fraction of that which Beyoncé’s evidently put in. Her earlier albums, even the broadly excellent 4, prompted nowhere near as much discussion, simply because there was less to say – you don’t see anyone smashing out 1,200-word breakdowns of Sweet Dreams (2008).

In Formation, released in January, she sings about “hot sauce in her bag” and having mutually gratifying sex with her husband; three months later, in Lemonade, the baseball bat with which she’s venting about his infidelity is discreetly labelled “Hot Sauce”.

Shea Serrano (@SheaSerrano) hot sauce turning out to be a baseball bat is a top five plot twist in the history of art and literature and everything

With Beyoncé, you can never be sure what’s the gun that’s going to be let off in the second act. And that’s what makes her work – her career – so rewarding to consider. Commenters may disagree – but you’re still reading, aren’t you?