In chronological order:
1. Instant Death
I happened to be at the Ross Park Mall on Saturday afternoon, walking from the food court to Macy’s in search of a Father’s Day gift for my dad, when I happened to notice 17 black women, laid on the mall floor, paralyzed in shock, mouths agape and wigs snatched all the way the fuck off. Each was also still clutching her cellphone, staring at it with what looked to be frozen disbelief.
Confused about what was happening, I checked my phone to see if some sort of rapture had occurred. “Oh,” I said to myself after discovering the cause for this cataclysmic event. “Beyoncé just dropped some new shit. This makes sense now.”
2. Resurrection and Then Cartwheels
Instantly, each of the fallen black women gasped for breath, sat up, started bawling and then spontaneously jumped into a giant group cartwheel. They basically made a human Ferris wheel. I tried to capture it on my phone, but when I played back the video, all I saw was a bright light and confetti. On closer inspection, the confetti was actually Nas’ album cover ripped into a trillion tiny pieces (also, each snatched-the-fuck-off wig was firmly and magically reattached).
3. An Electromagnetic Surge of Energy, Activity and Production
Within the first five minutes of Everything Is Love’s release, I’d already read a dozen 2,500-word-long pieces on it. Within 10 minutes, I’d already read each of the syllabi inspired by the “Apeshit” video.
I even considered enrolling in one of the six-week-long courses on it the New School is already offering, just because the title—“Gravitational Time Dilation and Beyoncé: How King Bey Solved Black Holes”—is intriguing as fuck.
4. Performative Sobriety and Objectivity
And by “performative sobriety and objectivity,” I mean “high-grade hate.” With a speed matched only by the heat and fury of the snatched wigs, contrarians and “well, actually”-ians and Kappas and niggas in serious need of a spa day or something rush to whichever platforms they have access to— Twitter, an open mic, perhaps even an elevated futon at a day party—to hurl turds of Beyoncé-related hate in everyone’s punchbowls.
“Where do they get all of these turds?” everyone wonders. “It can’t be healthy to be THAT damn regular.”
No one knows. But I suspect they’re all just on really high-fiber diets.