Sophie Anyanwu-ikegwuonu's Analysis Of Beyoncé Lemonade Video Should Make You Think Twice

We have read many analysis of Beyoncé's Lemonade video, we have heard critics speak and we have seen and heard of the beehives attacks on their suspicion of who they think JayZ cheated on Beyoncé with. Out of all these analysis, we have decided to stick to Sophie Anyanwu-ikegwuonu's analysis of the video which connected Beyoncé to Nigerian cultures.

Please read and see why we love this analysis.

Sophie wrote: I took the time to watch Beyoncé's musical movie Lemonade, and I have been dumbstruck and in utter awe of her great creativity and reverence to history.

You see, while the rest of the shallow world were looking at her movie as having everything to do with Jay-Z cheating on her, others desperately looking for an illuminati or voodoo connection, she has so tactfully put out her strongest message yet, on the Black movement in America.


I think she had her message on the essence of black lives well encapsulated and entwined in her supposed love story with Jay-Z.....very much like how Nostradamus shrouded his futuristic, prophetic messages with euphemisms and analogies that threw the common man off track, in his time.

I also think she made significant references to my home country Nigeria in this her greatest work yet.

I see her reference to the sacred Yoruba art Ori, and reverence to the Yoruba goddess Oshun, who is known for her unpredictable temperament.
Oshun is associated with beauty, femininity, twins and water.

Most importantly to me, I see her reference to the Igbo Landing....a piece of my ancestral history that stops me dead on my tracks anytime I remember it.
I can't help but wonder, in great pride and honor, the path these brave Igbos chose, versus being enslaved in America.
I can't even begin to imagine what they saw that made them choose death as an option.

Picture about 75 Igbo slaves bound for America, via the Middle Passage, taking over their slave ship, and grounding it just off the coast of Georgia.
The slave masters eventually took back control of the ship, and salvaged what they could of the remaining slaves.
In defiance, these male and female Igbo slaves stood up, and marched right back into the Atlantic ocean, chanting that the Water Spirit that brought them over, will also take them home.

By the way, I didn't say they jumped into the ocean, people....they walked back into the ocean!
This is suicide on steroids!
I think a near drowning experience to anybody will help put their plight in perspective.

They fearlessly walked into that damn ocean....to their deaths...
......with the water levels rising slowly from their feet, up to their heads...
.....and in total submission, they replaced their much needed, life giving air with water.....and inhaled it into their mouths and noses as they drowned and succumbed to death....

I'd like to let that little detail sink in for a minute....

The scene is played out in her movie, with the young women walking into the ocean, and stopping half way, holding hands and raising them in unity and freedom.
The next scene is Beyonce's head adorned with the rich Yoruba art of Ori, seeming to spin round and round the screen......
....and then in the following scene.....she is home, in Africa.

If you ask me, I'd say Lemonade is about the black man's universal storyline of being served lemons for centuries, after his acceptance of the white man alongside his values and religion on the African soil, his homeland, his subsequent betrayal and enslavement, his defiance, indomitable will-power, and sheer will to live in freedom on the American soil....or die trying.

So while the BeeHive are still looking for "Becky with the good hair", those that got the message, already got it, and will continue to make lemonade out of it....lol.

© Sophie Anyanwu-Ikegwuonu