To the right, to the right
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