Part concert, part fable, Black Is King is the 2020 visual album in which Beyoncé takes the lessons of "The Lion King" (2019) and retells them for a new generation of young kings and queens looking for crowns of their own.
What is Black Is King about?
Black Is King does not unfold like a conventional feature. It is a visual album: a chain of songs staged as scenes, each one carrying a piece of a larger journey. The spine of that journey is borrowed from "The Lion King" (2019), whose lessons about inheritance, exile, self-knowledge and return are reworked here with human faces instead of animals. The young royals at its centre must work out who they are and where they come from before they can claim what is theirs. Music drives every step, while costume, dance and landscape do the storytelling that dialogue would handle in an ordinary drama.
About the cast
Beyoncé Knowles is credited both on screen and behind the camera, sharing the directing credit with Blitz Bazawule and Dikayl Rimmasch. The cast list also includes Adut Akech, Naomi Campbell, Blue Ivy Carter, Connie Chiume, Lupita Nyong'o, Kelly Rowland and Moonchild Sanelly, a line-up that brings together figures known from music, fashion and film.
Context & significance
The film is an American production running 85 minutes, and its catalogue genres tell you how hard it is to pin down: adventure, drama, fantasy and music all at once. That mix makes sense for a visual album, a form in which a full set of songs is given a continuous filmed treatment so that the record can be watched from start to finish as one piece. The link to "The Lion King" (2019) gives viewers a familiar map, since most people already know the shape of that story, and it frees the film to spend its energy on imagery and performance. Audience reaction has been mixed, with responses tending to depend on how much a viewer enjoys music-led, non-narrative cinema. For anyone curious about how a pop album can be turned into a feature-length fantasy about identity and heritage, it remains a distinctive entry from 2020.
Watching Black Is King on Ktime
Black Is King can be watched on K-Time once you log in to your account; this page is free to read without one. K-Time is a streaming home for Persian speakers around the world, and its menus and browsing experience are offered in Farsi.