Take my credit card
The key to my house
Take my car

— “Suga Mama”

Anything you cop I’ll split the bill…
I can do for you what Martin did for the people
Ran by the men but the women keep the tempo

— “Upgrade U”

The new Beyoncé album is lyrically disappointing. “Suga Mama” is surely the anti-Bills Bills Bills. Interesting that it kind of sounds like Kanye West’s “Golddigger”; perhaps it’s intended as a kind of response, a disappointingly desperate insistence that Beyoncé, at least, isn’t a gold digger. The tunes, though, are pretty great. The beats aren’t especially surprising, but it says something pretty good about R&B that this level of quality is just business as usual. It’s probably a better album than Beyoncé’s first one; only a couple of ballads, one of which, “Irreplaceable,” is absolutely gorgeous.

Jay-Z has some interesting bars on “Upgrade U,” mind. I assume the reference to Saturn is some kind of 5% numerology, but I’m not exactly sure what it means:

‘Cause that rock on ya finger is like a tumor
You can’t put ya hand in ya new purse…
Mafioso, oh baby you ever seen Saturn
No, not the car but everywhere we are