As Beyoncé’s art has grown outwardly political and pro-black throughout the decade, she has increasingly called upon African-born artists to participate in and inform her work. She did this with Tofo Tofo, the Mozambican pantsula dancers who appeared in her 2011 “Run the World (Girls)” video. In her self-titled era, she sampled Nigerian feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on 2013’s “***Flawless,” and Griot vocalist Ismael Kouyaté on the Afro-inspired “Grown Woman.” The Lemonade film, which was threaded by excerpts of Somali-British poet Warsan Shire’s work, featured ritual Yoruba body makeup work by Nigerian-American artist Laolu Senbanjo. During her 2018 set at Global Citizen Fest South Africa, she recruited a local choir to add Zulu backing vocals to a performance of “Halo.” And later that year, her headlining Coachella performance interpolated Fela Kuti, which can be heard on the subsequent Homecoming film and album.
In her ongoing quest to both pay homage to a black cultural history and contextualize herself within it, she took advantage of her role as Nala in the super-CGI remake of The Lion King and hired a swath of African artists and producers for a new album inspired by the movie. The Gift is an extension of Beyoncé’s work and its themes of ancestry, self-love, spirituality, and family. But its main purpose is to showcase today’s African musical stars, putting their sound on an enormous platform using the commercial reach of one of the world’s biggest pop titans and Disney’s highest-grossing franchise.
Similar to Kendrick Lamar’s Black Panther-inspired album and other recent globe-trotting works like Drake’s More Life and GoldLink’s Diaspora, The Gift is thrilling because of the diasporic connections being made through collaboration. African artists from Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, and South Africa all display a wide range of regional genres and merge them with American styles. This works best on tracks like “My Power,” where rap weirdo Tierra Whack and Top 40 songwriter Nija join forces with South African gqom badasses Busiswa and Moonchild Sanelley for a searing DJ Lag-produced track about black girl determination and resilience. Meanwhile, “Don’t Jealous Me” features a survey of different artists that fall under the oft-misused umbrella term of Afrobeat, as Nigerian stars Tekno, Yemi Alade, and Mr Eazi bring their own signature swagger to a sinister gqom-inflected banger. “Mood 4 Eva,” featuring A-listers Bey, JAY-Z, and Childish Gambino, flips a sample Malian artist Oumou Sangaré’s 1989 Wassoulou song “Diaraby Nene” into a buoyant, hedonistic flex track.
The album also nods to Africa’s influence in Caribbean music with “Already,” a track that draws out the rhythmic similarities between dancehall and Afropop by linking Ghanaian artist Shatta Wale with global riddim-fetishizers Major Lazer. Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed “African giant” Burna Boy warns against blindly following the crowd on his solo track “Ja Ara E,” a track that channels Fela Kuti with a laidback dembow groove.
But, as critics and artists were quick to point out, The Gift doesn’t completely cover all the regions and styles that Africa has to offer. There are no featured East or North African artists, which is particularly odd considering The Lion King’s setting is loosely based on Kenyan geographical features and the character’s names originate from the East African language of Swahili. Beyoncé does her best to rectify the lack of representation by including Swahili in the beginning of “Spirit,” the only Gift song that appears in the movie, and even sings in the language at the end of “Otherside,” a glowing H.E.R.-style ballad about the afterlife. But ultimately, The Gift’s emphasis on West African Afropop and South African house seems like a half-measure in an album that presents itself as extremely dedicated to some kind of authenticity, especially coming from the reliably meticulous Beyoncé.
Beyoncé is still at her best when she goes off-book and gets personal. “Brown Skin Girl,” featuring Blue Ivy, Brooklyn rapper SAINt JHN, and Nigerian pop star WizKid, doesn’t seem to be tied to a particular Lion King plot point. And uncoincidentally, it’s one of the more touching songs on the album. After Blue Ivy sings the hook with growing assuredness, Bey sings directly to her and any other black girl who might be judged or dismissed based on her appearance: “I love everything about you, from your nappy curls/To every single curve, your body natural… I never trade you for anybody else,” she sings in a truly heartfelt case for self-acceptance. Beyoncé takes care to dole these pearls of wisdom in a way that’s specific, but also universal to those of African descent. “Bigger,” both directed towards her offspring and anyone else who is of the diaspora, is a rallying call to aspire to greatness, because your life is connected to a greater black legacy and history.
But not every track on the album shakes off the precious Disney vibes. The most lackluster songs don’t have a strong conceptual core, meeting the prompt of being “inspired by” The Lion King and not doing much else. On “Water,” Cameroonian singer Salatiel sings about meeting your love interest “by the river,” conjuring up images of Simba and Nala. But confusingly, Pharrell just chants lines about water wings: “Yes, we can make it far/Don’t need inflatables.” “Spirit,” the gospel-bop ballad, makes a lot of sense in the movie when it soundtracks two incredibly realistic animated lions bounding through the desert, but it doesn’t fit well with the other, more loose and ambitious tracks.
Even though Bey has referred to The Gift as “sonic cinema,” the album stands in the shadow of a movie that stands in the shadow of the 1994 original. Though not fully comprehensive or that musically far-reaching (due to its prioritization of African genres that have already experienced crossover success), the album still succeeds in introducing a whole new musical universe to the average American listener. And for fans already familiar with genres on The Gift, it arrives as a crucial, all-too-rare example in which African music and culture are actually being presented in the American mainstream by the artists who make it. It’s an honorable feat for Beyoncé, who has repeatedly put time, money, and energy into recruiting African talents, broadening the scope of what pop can look and sound like. Only this time, it’s a soundtrack for a Disney movie about cats.
