Already (song)
"Already" is a song by American singer Beyoncé, Ghanaian singer Shatta Wale and American trio Major Lazer from the 2019 album The Lion King: The Gift and featured in the 2020 film Black Is King.
Release
"Already" was written by Beyoncé, Starrah, Nii Armah Mensah, Picard Brothers Ronald Banful and Diplo, with Beyoncé, Diplo and Picard Brothers producing the song respectively."Already" was originally released as a track in 2019's The Lion King: The Gift, a soundtrack album curated by Beyoncé for the 2019 photorealistic animated remake of The Lion King. It was then featured in Black Is King, a visual counterpart and television film for the album, released on Disney Plus on July 31, 2020. Its music video was uploaded separately to YouTube and Instagram a few hours prior to the film's release.
Composition and lyrical interpretation
Craig Jenkins of Vulture described the song as a "tune about remembering your roots" and suggested that the song pertains to when a "lost and dethroned Simba is forced to come to terms with his legacy. Jon Pareles of The New York Times stated that "Already" acted as a "springboard" for " plot points" alongside "Keys to the Kingdom" and "Scar", songs also featured on The Lion King: The Gift. Matthew Meadow of Your EDM described Beyoncé's vocals on "Already" as "flawlessly smooth", whereas Devki Nehra of Firstpost described the song as "reggae-heavy."Music video
Production
Stylist Zerina Akers spoke about how she "wanted to reference different cultures, traditions and tribes, but to have the freedom to create fantasy, for people to be able to escape into a new world" through the fashion in the film. One costume in the "Already" video was a 5:31 Jérôme blue Nigerian lace trench dress with an accompanying Nigerian gele, inspired by the fashion of matriarchal women at Nigerian weddings. Another costume, a Burberry cowprint top and skirt, was inspired by the Xhosa and Zulu people of South Africa, who use the hide of Nguni cattle in their shields. Akers also collaborated with American fashion designer Natalia Fedner on a gold chain headpiece covered in gold earrings of various styles and sizes; embedding the earrings into Fedner's patent pending chain textile headdress, Akers wanted to show how gold jewelry connects generations of black women and the African diaspora.The hairstyles in
Members of the Accra-based dance school Dance With Purpose Academy were recruited for the video. In 2019, the DWP Academy posted their own choreography for the song after it was first released. This caught the attention of Beyoncé and her team reached out to them to invite them to feature in Black Is King. Stephen Ojo and Caleb Bonney of dance group AVO Boyz worked with American choreographer JaQuel Knight on the choreography for the video. Ojo and Bonney showed Knight choreography to the track that they had made a few days prior for a class they were teaching. They then taught Beyoncé the choreography, including several dance styles from throughout Africa, such as the Gbese, Poco and Kpakujemu from Nigeria, the C’est Moi from Ivory Coast, and the network from Ghana. Ojo said that his aim for the choreography "was to make sure the moves we were bringing out were properly represented and danced in the right way. I wanted to make sure Africa was being represented properly and not diluted." Ojo commented on his experience working with Beyoncé, saying: "She was a very good student. Paying homage to the originators, paying respect to our culture—some people might not care. But she was very receptive. She was being respectful the whole time, listening. And every move was clean, sharp, crisp." A scene where black men in purple suits jumping up and down in unison is a reference to the adumu Maasai jumping dance of Kenya and Tanzania, a ceremony in which men in a circle compete for who can jump the highest with a straight posture.
Ugo Rondinone's sun sculptures, which symbolize rebirth and renewal, were featured in the "Already" music video in order to reflect the film's motif of the 'circle of life'. African-American Flag was also included in the video; the piece was created by David Hammons in 1990 to represent the marginalization of African-American artists and is seen as a symbol of black liberation.
Portions of the video were filmed in Ghana, with the Ghanaian chapter of the film being led by director Joshua Kissi. Filming took place in the Eastern Region and Greater Accra Region, with the team wanting to include locations that were underrepresented in depictions of Ghana, such as Shatta Wale's hometown of Nima.