Within this space, Beyoncé and the album’s collaborators feature images steeped in African and black American tradition: Yoruba paint, braids, warrior goddesses and various depictions of home. Gorgeous landscapes, trees and skies, are intercut with spiritual imagery and visions of regal women linked physically and emotionally through a shared experience, whether it’s recovering from unfaithfulness or coping with seeing black people murdered. Through it all, there’s a sense that we can all be reborn. This is what art should do. At a time when hatred runs deep, Lemonade offers love as the ultimate salvation.

HBO airing on April 23, 2016, following by album on Tidal. The Formation World Tour kicked off four days later on April 27, 2016 in Miami, Fl.

Global reach and the most discussed album in modern history. Recent Peabody Award Winner.

Presented as a visual album, Lemonade is as much a journey in personal healing as it is a collective purge. A deeply urgent body of work, it manages to feel both broad and intimate, weaving themes of betrayal, perseverance and black sisterhood in America. By examining broken relationships—with a partner and with one’s country—Beyoncé explores the radical power of forgiveness and communal strength in honest and haunting ways, and with material as emotionally naked as it is painfully familiar.

The surprise release of Lemonade forced the world and the music business to stop, but most important is that the work had much to say. One of the album’s most powerful moments splices a quote from Malcolm X—“The most disrespected person in America is the black woman”—into the middle of a narrative that brilliantly examines that precise line of thought. Which part of the family tree does pain bloom from? And how exactly does it get cured? The visceral interludes, written by poet Warsan Shire, further transcend the material. Directors Khalil Joseph, Melina Matsoukas, Dikayl Rimmasch, Todd Tourso, Jonas Akerlund, Mark Romanek and Beyoncé herself link each song using fire, water and air elements that form a divine conceptual web.

Within this space, Beyoncé and the album’s collaborators feature images steeped in African and black American tradition: Yoruba paint, braids, warrior goddesses and various depictions of home. Gorgeous landscapes, trees and skies, are intercut with spiritual imagery and visions of regal women linked physically and emotionally through a shared experience, whether it’s recovering from unfaithfulness or coping with seeing black people murdered. Through it all, there’s a sense that we can all be reborn. This is what art should do. At a time when hatred runs deep, Lemonade offers love as the ultimate salvation.