[LP Review] Ciara Shifts Gears with Boundary-Pushing 'Beauty Marks' Sonically, in Business, and Lyrically with the Help of Self Love.
CIara is noticeably evolved on her new Record Beauty Scars and doesn’t hold back.
Beauty Marks (2019) LP by Ciara
It's really good to hear another passionate album from the first lady of ‘crunk R&B’ Ciara and what’s made this even sweeter is that Beauty Marks is an album that she published under her own label, something extremely new for her. It's very interesting as this can riskingly take an artist to strange places if things don’t work out as expected. These are different times when thinking in comparisons of where music began in how it was released, distributed so on and so forth. Well don’t underestimate these artist out here, it seems to have been something that Ciara has had a successful time adjusting to. The industry can be something that takes thick skin to persevere as there are many hurdles and things tugging at the main important thing that keeps everything a float which is the money coming in. For males, the resistance against this may be bit easier just on general bases of the spoken inequality and double standards that inhabit the music industry. “I’m a groundbreaking woman, I get loud when I wanna, Bring me down I go harder, (Promise that I give you life, promise I know what you like),” Ciara sings in “Dose” where she exclaims her intentions on bringing the realness a lot closer and stronger than where she brought it before singing “when you fall (fall) just get back up again,” signifying that there are lessons that can be gained from downfalls or underdog tides against you. Along with this has been a dedication that everyone has been able to keep their sight on of hers, and that’s her marriage and more importantly her self-love. Ciara and Russell have been on a steady road with one another and radiating good examples of how a family should be maintained on a general basis. They support one another to the fullest with everything that they do in terms of Russell’s NFL career and Ciara’s musicianship. Along with that Ciara’s decision-making patterns and how she has become more classy, business savvy, yet finer like a wine and more agile with every choreographed dance move she executes, she has clearly nurtured herself in love.
Treading History Can Bring Highs & Lows as Fruitful Wisdom for the Future.
Ciara has been rolling these amazing vibed out albums for a long time now and she really expresses how she feels through all the time she’s been in this game. The song “Greatest Love” from Beauty Marks is where you can tell Ciara has quite literally summed and converted a valuable beauty from a particular “history” acknowledging this amazing energy that has been kept through a relationship. Its very noticeable that she is comfortable following the lead to a degree, at this point in the relation her song is geared toward, and that really shows through the entire album as well. Now let's not be oblivious to the generic ways of an iconic musicians’ rise to the ultimate highs of stardom and that's clearly not straying from the status quo in terms of business. Yet a lot of artist are finding it easier to be the captains of their own ships and that is something that Beauty Marks is all about. That stand in terms of owning your power and taking the struggles that came with that stand in stride of being a bigger and better you in the future.
A Collection Charged with Feminist Elements
Woman have been running the world in terms of music, from concerts/ tours to running campaigns and being entrepreneurs of amazing products, influencing on social media. Come on now, does this really comes as a surprise to anyone, when I think of all the latest reigning music artist that fall in the female category including Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, and of course even Madonna I think world domination, bar setters, innovators and game changers. So many women are rising to the occasion of being their own bosses and it shows in many industries. Beauty Marks, follows this lead by surrounding most of the tracks with a triumphant undertone that puts the general struggle woman have progressed in overcoming as underdogs in everything relating to sexism, such as “Girl Gang” a feminized anthem that's simply about the event of celebratory success with the gang. It's a very wide open way for woman to connect and find the song in common because many things lead to reasons why women celebrate success. They fight for so many causes that have to do with equality and these are the times when they are seeing outcome for their efforts where they stand in unison. This element is also discoverable in the music video to the song “Level Up” where Ciara says “Remember what I told you, be your own boss, love yourself, get up and dance, ‘level up’” as the intro to the video’s track. This has been one of the first songs from this Beauty Marks era that showed itself before any of the other songs, so it has been the original basis of this campaign of hers since the filming of the video which released with the audio in entirety.
The Financial Burden of Releasing through an Independent Label
Being in charge of an independent label involves a lot of hats that have to be worn to get the music out the correct way, which is something that Ciara took the pleasure of wearing. Music artist sometimes have to bear the horrific event of their album being shelved never to see the light of day. Beauty Marks, Ciara says, was going to be one of those albums that never saw the light of day because people that were in the offices didn’t believe in it, stopping the execution process of the commercial exposure. This is a wide known fact about the death of a lot of good studio produced songs that just don’t get to reach the actual LP or EP of that particular artist. I’m thinking because there is a lot of things and logistics that go into the putting out of an Album, more than what a music artist could possible care about like budgeting, press tours, campaigns, etc., in some cases. Then there are those cases where the powers that be in office truly aren’t aware of the culture impacting potentialities a project can have due to their inexperience in the subject matter of the project, the intimate relations of the listening audience and that particular genre of music. I’m not minimizing the different ways that artist allege they are undermined and underappreciated, it was just to exemplify a couple. The most important thing to derive from that is that Ciara felt like now was the time, of her 7th studio album, to be the foundation of the company side of what music has to be accompanied with to be commercially successful (for the most part that is). Even the album title of this project Beauty Marks nods at that complementarity of her bold, forward pushing, ownership inclusive, decision.
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