Black Is King (ICYMI Beyoncé's Gift To Africa ft. Ivie Ani)

Switched on Pop

Vox Media Podcast Network

Music Interviews, Music History, Music, Music Commentary

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2020

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Beyoncé' has released "Black Is King," a visual album based off of music that she released last year. We're rerunning that piece so that you can place the visual component of "Black Is King" in context to the music. For the live action remake of the Lion King, Beyoncé, (who voices Nala in the film), recorded and curated a companion soundtrack called The Gift. She worked with leading Afropop stars to expose the music of the continent to a global audience. In her piece, “Diversity Is in the Details: What Beyoncé’s ‘The Lion King: The Gift’ Gets Right and Wrong,” Okayplayer music editor Ivie Ani argues that the album highlights music while unintentionally treating the continent as a monolith. Ani joins Switched On Pop to break down this album and what it means for Afropop. SONGS DISCUSSED Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Childish Gambino, Oumou Sangaré – MOOD 4 EVA Oumou Sangaré – Diaraby Nen Burna Boy – JA ARA Fela Kuti – Water No Get Enemy Fena, MDQ, Mayonde, Kagwe, Blinky Bill – PARTY NATION BONUS Listen to Blinky and Ivie’s East African playlist recommendations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Switched On Pop, I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.
0:15.2	And I'm musicologist Nate Slun.
0:18.2	Nate, when we were kids, there were a handful of Disney classics that sort of defined childhood,
0:25.1	right?
0:26.1	Oh yeah, we talked about one recently, Aladdin.
0:28.4	Yeah, and it went over really well.
0:29.9	And little did we know that at a mere quarter century later, Disney would be
0:33.3	remaking these classics with some of the biggest names in music right now, including Beyonce
0:38.4	and Childish Gambino.
0:39.6	Disney movies, Spring Eternal, it seems.
0:42.5	Well, for the latest turn of Disney's remakes, we have the live animated version of the
0:48.4	Lion King.
0:49.4	And we're not going to talk about the film today, because we're a music podcast.
0:52.2	We're going to talk about the music.
0:54.0	For the film, Beyonce created a compilation album called The Gift, which she produced
0:59.7	and curated.
1:00.7	And it's kind of like Black Panther and Kendrick Lamar, you know, that album.
1:05.2	Oh, yeah, yeah, love that record.
1:06.8	Well, this one similarly has a lot of guest appearances.
1:10.0	We've got Jay-Z Kendrick's on it for Rale, Childish Gambino, Tierra Wack, and St. John.
1:15.4	It also highlights many African stars whom American audiences are only beginning to familiarize
1:20.4	with.
	...

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