Get in 'Formation': Beyonce's new song and video, in time for the Super Bowl
New song timed to the big game.
Ever the master of surprise, Beyonce released a new song, "Formation," on Saturday afternoon, timed to her announced appearance with Coldplay during the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday night.
The song and its video is a vehicle for the Houston born super diva to embrace her identity as a black woman and a Southerner - and timed to Black History Month, the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
"My daddy Alabama, mama Louisiana / You mix that Negro with that Creole make a Texas bamma," she sings on the Mike Will Made It-produced track. "I like my baby hair with baby hair and Afros / I like my Negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils."
The video for "Formation," which Beyonce is rumored to have rehearsed for the show during halftime of the event in Santa Clara, California which - oh yeah, will also feature a football game pitting the Carolina Panthers vs. the Denver Broncos - is filled with provocative imagery.
At the start attention demanding wide shot at the start, Beyonce's perched on a rooftop of a police cruiser partly submerged in Hurricane Katrina floodwaters in New Orleans. By the end of the video, she's drowned. A shot of a graffitti on a wall reads: "Stop Killing Us." In another of the many set pieces in the clip, she's dressed in black funeral garb, but as the aggressive rhythm track gains fury, she raises both middle fingers in defiance.
The clip, which also shows a man holding a newspaper called The Truth with Martin Luther King on the front page, isn't only a political statement. It features the singer in an array of antebellum and thoroughly modern outfits, and in the shot captured above, most impressive hair extensions.
Beyonce's and Jay-Z's daughter Blue Ivy is one of the child dancers put to work in the relentlessly energetic video for the song that samples New Orleans bounce rapper Big Freedia and associates sexual satisfaction with a visit to Red Lobster in a way that's sure to be good for the seafood chain's business. And if the food's lacking in spice, she's coming prepared: "I got hot sauce in my bag, swag."
Does all of this mean a new Beyonce album or tour is in the offing? No word on that yet. But even if it's a one-off, Queen Bey is poised to maximize the commercial opportunities presented by the addition of "Formation" to her brand: There's already a "Formation Collection" line of gear available at shop.beyonce.com, with T-shirts that declare "I Twirl On Them Haters" and yes, a bag emblazoned with the words: "I Got Hot Sauce In My Bag."
Previously: 5 Great Earth Wind & Fire songs Follow In The Mix on Twitter