Beyonce’s back with 4, her follow-up to 2008’s I am… Sasha Fierce. Since Sasha, the vocalist announced that she would be killing off her alter ego and merging her disparate personalities to create music that fused all of her influences into a new, unique sound. It’s an ambitious vision but, unfortunately, one that 4 fails to deliver.
4 has been in production for two-and-a-half years and has involved many mega-producers, including Babyface, Kanye West, Ryan Tedder, and The-Dream. At the end of the project, Beyonce submitted a staggering 72 songs to her label, though the final album has been pared down to just 12. You’d think that with the talent involved and abundance of material that the final cut would be a well-edited, polished collection of exciting music. You’d be wrong.
The album starts with “1+1,” a ballad ripped straight from The Bodyguard-era Whitney Houston. Beyonce does a sufficient impersonation but fails to add anything new or unique to the sound. It’s the type of track that would fit at home on some forgotten cassette tape next to the acid-wash jeans in my basement. The rest of the first half of the album feels like a trip down memory lane to the early ’90s, complete with cheesy electric piano and guitar riffs lifted from a cancelled sitcom. In one of the most troubling spots on the album, Beyonce channels “Do the Bartman” on the song “Love on Top.” (Seriously, listen to them together. They both have the Janet Jackson-inspired rhythm and early-’90s dance synth bassline.)
I’m sure that Beyonce finds great value in the early ’90s music, but it comes off as self-indulgent on 4. If you’re going to retread familiar musical territory, you either have to do it with exceptional style and ability or add some new twist to make it fresh. 4 does neither and falls into the same pitfall that Lady Gaga’s recent release, Born This Way exhibited: It blatantly copied her influences without adding much of her own voice. Although the songs are all originals, 4 smacks of karaoke night for Beyonce as she revisits her favorite memories from the early ’90s.
Later, the album shifts somewhat abruptly with “Countdown.” It’s almost as if her label, Columbia, was worried that the early-’90s R&B escapade might not carry the album, so they hedged their risk by throwing some club songs on the end. The effect is jarring and throws the listener from a slow trip down memory lane to decent, but not overly compelling, club music. The album peaks with the first single, “Run the World (Girls),” and “Party,” which features Andre 3000 and Kanye West. The second half of the album doesn’t drag as much, but still leaves something to be desired. Beyonce fails to make the music her own and comes off as a weak tribute to the early-’90s music that inspired her.
The hope is that 4 represents strides by Beyonce to expand her skills into new areas and ultimately develop greater artistry. Perhaps 4 will be viewed as a necessary transition to something better, similar to how Green Day’s stylistically confused Warning preceded their breakthrough American Idiot. Without the foresight of Beyonce’s artistic arc, however, 4 is utterly 4-gettable. It represents not a step forward, but a step back. If you like this music, go get the unfiltered version — Whitney, Janet, or even Salt-n-Pepa — and leave this one on the shelf. Oh well, here’s to the next one, B.