Slay, or you’ll get eliminated

By: Sey Elemo, Columnist

All praises and honour to the High Priestess Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter, Saint Bey, Our Lady of Perpetual Slay.

Have you heard the good word of Formation?

Queen Bey has called on us! We must humbly arrange whatever is left of our edges (the shorter, wispy, hairs at the cusp of the hairline, also know as baby hairs) and get in formation!

“I did not come to play with you heauxs. I came slay, bitch-“

A declaration of realness before the Queen snatched everyone’s follicles back five generations.

Bey donned braids in all various forms (from French to box), and in fact slayed with the most unapologetically black song and even more unapologetic video. This was a reminder to everyone (because it seems that people, most often white people, forget) that Beyoncé, is in fact, a strong, successful, fleeking black woman and she’s extremely proud of her heritage and where she comes from.

Queen Bey would like us black women, her sisters (ladies), to join her in her flagrant display of black pride and bad bitchery, and celebrate our strength and our beauty, openly without regret (get in formation), so that we may slay eternally.

And theeeeeen Beyoncé got her black ass up on the Super Bowl stage and performed this black ass song, with her black ass back up dancers, and caused me to evaporate into thin black air.

It was the most public and necessary display of black opulence I have seen in a long time.

Now, as per usual, there were haters (the same ones that the queen would like us to twirl on) and they were mostly white women that didn’t know “how to sing along,” so they resorted to calling Beyoncé a “cop hater.” They said that the song is unfair to white girls. They called her a black panther (Looooooord, that is a whole other topic for a whole other article), and so on.

Why?

Because she opened the video sitting atop a police car submerged in water, and showed several homes also submerged in water, to remind you of the horrors of Hurricane Katrina and the hundreds of black people that were left for dead in the urban areas of NOLA?

Because she showed a young black boy dancing, literally just dancing, in front of police cars with the message “STOP SHOOTING US” spray-painted on the wall?

Oh, whatever.

LOOK. I get it. You’re upset. It bothers you that you don’t know what baby hairs are. It bothers you that you don’t understand the need to carry hot sauce around in you bag (swag). It bothers you that you don’t know the difference between negro and the n-word. It bothers you that you don’t even understand the true meaning of slay.

I know this is frustrating for you. But the whole truth is that in this exact moment… we don’t have to explain these things. We’re busy celebrating. Give us our moment before we educate, dammit. As a matter of fact, if you’d like clarity on these concepts, I’d be happy to sit with you in the Black Student Union Office (my second home) and explain them IN DEPTH. But do not interrupt my slay!

Dear white people, ESPECIALLY those that call yourselves allies, understand that you don’t NEED to sing along. Understand that this song isn’t for you. Understand that your place right now as we get in formation, is on the sidelines cheering us black women on, while we dream it, work hard, and grind ‘til we own it; “it” being whatever the hell we want and need, from OUR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS TO CLEAN WATER OR TO NOT BE SHOT DEAD IN THE STREETS, to anything that we want to accomplish. Just be happy for us… sheesh.

To my sisters: keep working hard and stay woke with your afros high, and your fists even higher. Keep your edges lain and your leave out slain. Pour coconut oil over your life!

Yours in Blackness,

A Ratchet Revolutionary

P.S. I have a friend who works at Red Lobster. There was, in fact, an influx of patrons after this song hit the Internet.

Leave a Reply

Close

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.