The Grandiosity of art juxtaposed with the boastfulness of hip hop

The use of previously royal spaces for the self-worship and self-proclaiming predicate of self-made importance is both a show of power but also a reduction to mass appreciation of over exposed highly valuable artworks. Classical art up against street style and dance is an unlikely visual in the new video released by Beyoncé and Jay Z for their song “Apeshit” from their joint album “Everything is Love” shot in the Louvre. Beyonce and Jay Z as American self-made celebrities have reduced the palace to a set in the same way that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West reduced Versailles to an event hall for their pre-wedding party.

Are Beyoncé and Jay Z just clinging on to monuments like the Louvre because it has become a part of popular culture to add yourself to art without taking ownership of it and giving access to the masses through the appreciation of art in public spheres like museums? Mass pilgrimage to simply sight the Mona Lisa in the way that tourists simply flock clichéd and kitsch monuments just to take a photo and claim their dominance over that location in the way that a magnet on the fridge or a selfie holding the pyramid of the Louvre in between your fingertips is a memento of a Colombus-esque discovery and dominance even though every snapshot with the art is as unoriginal as the artwork itself is becoming because of the mass consumption. Beyoncé and Jay Z have surpassed the tourist however and moved over into an expression of the self. Yet they are as clichéd as the tourist in that they bring themselves to the foreground and fill the halls of the Louvre, the only difference is that they add further dimensions to the art for mass consumption of these popular artworks.

By occupying the Louvre and taking ownership of it in a way by giving it their own creative direction, they are trying to show that their wealth has reached a significance that they can occupy spaces that are exclusive to a wealth of imagery that does not resonate with them on a cultural level. The only way that the music and the artwork match up is that the art itself is as grandiose as the grand opinion they now have of themselves having built a body of work that gives them as simple human beings the ability to draw crowds just to see them sing and rap about and revel in their own being in the way that only hip hop has been able to master. As Beyoncé boastfully crows that they have the ability to make “a crowd go Apeshit”.

The gyrating in front of “The Coronation of Napoleon” by Beyoncé and her dancers in street style is a paradox that does not easily go together but still is ingenious nonetheless because the art that is on show is so exclusive of any person of colour. Beyoncé and Jay Z are so self-interested that they fail to resign to the fact that they are further propagating art that has been exclusive of their race that they force themselves into the narrative for their own audiences.

Are Beyonce and Jay Z still creating art by simply recounting their lives in the way that lyricists have talked about their experiences in their music for centuries? Of course they are, but the only thing that falls short of this creation of art is that this album titled “Everything is Love” is too close to home and is not relatable to the listener other than it gives insight into the relationship of Beyoncé and Jay Z. The beauty of their music was that it uplifted themselves, within the stereotype and genre of hip-hop, while at the same time uplifting the listener through relatable lyrics in generic terms, expressions of love and life that was not a play by play of the romance that has been so under wraps, but at the same time so scrutinised yet ultimately revealed as flawed through their own music. For example songs such as “Bonnie & Clyde” and “Upgrade U” in which they never mentioned their own experiences but painted a picture of their romance were classics in that they were earlier forms of expressions in the music evolution of Beyoncé and Jay Z, whereas songs like “Family Feud” are more complex with resonating signs of dissonance between the two. This new music is art in that it is their truth, but it is too raw and intimate with lyrics hailing themselves and hailing their success that it just coheres to the boastfulness that is hip hop. They have gone through the stages of generics in “Crazy in Love”, private feud culminating in the elevator fight, public reveal through self-admittance in “Family Feud” of “4:44” and the proceeding interview between Jay Z and Dean Baquet of the New York Times where Jay Z admitted to cheating, Beyoncé revelling in pain in her album “Lemonade” and finally reconciliation and self-affirmation from the both of them in their joint album “Everything is Love”.