“As a gather ’round! moment of living-room excitement, the premiere of Beyoncé’s Lemonade on HBO on Saturday evening was reminiscent of the 1980s debuts of the extended Michael Jackson video mini-dramas for ‘Thriller’ and ‘Bad,’ ” Slate’s Carl Wilson wrote of this week’s seismic cultural event, the debut of a new album from Queen B. Though she’s created a whole new form, the visual album, Wilson points out that purely as music, Lemonade may not quite reach the heights of her previous, self-titled album. Of course, there’s so much more to Lemonade than music: Ruth Graham read the album as a shrewd act of gossip management, Aisha Harris explored the competing strains of radicalism and conservatism in the music and the images, Mark Joseph Stern pointed out the way one (triumphantly destructive) scene references an obscure ’90s art film, and Jordan Weissmann asked what Lemonade means for Tidal, Jay Z’s streaming service.
But even the star power of Beyoncé wasn’t enough to drown out the continued remembrance and mourning of Prince. Simon Doonan celebrated the artist’s singular style—and penchant for black panties—and recounted a few fond memories of working with His Purple Highness. (For a window display of the artist, he writes, “We ended up using a teen girl mannequin, but only after giving her a double mastectomy.”) Jack Hamilton reminded us that Prince was a straight-up god on the guitar. And in the wake of the revelation that Prince left no will, Helaine Olen looked into the future of the artist’s estate.
And still there’s more! Game of Thrones is back, and Drake dropped new music, too. A lightning round of extra links from the week in culture:
- What made the Game of Thrones Melisandre reveal so shocking
- Helen Oyeyemi’s new book is a short story collection even novel readers can get lost in
- All of Titus’ silly nicknames for Kimmy Schmidt, in one video
- The sauna debate that’s threatening the fabric of Icelandic society
- Political correctness comes to Inside Amy Schumer
- What the new Nina Simone biopic is missing
- A new play full of linguistic puzzles that deconstruct language and gender
- Why is lettuce always labeled triple-washed?
- If Key and Peele’s Keanu were about the human Keanu
