4 is the fourth studio album by the American singer and songwriter Beyoncé. It was released on June 24, 2011, by Parkwood Entertainment and Columbia Records. Recorded from March 2010 to May 2011, the album was produced by Beyoncé alongside Babyface, Jeff Bhasker, Kanye West, Kaskade, Brent Kutzle, and Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, Switch, and The-Dream, among others. The album features a single lead guest appearance, from André 3000 of Outkast. Following a career hiatus that reignited her creativity, Beyoncé conceived 4 as a record rooted in traditional rhythm and blues that stood apart from contemporary popular music.
4 was Beyoncé's first album after she ended her working relationship with her father and manager Mathew Knowles. She conceived 4 as an intimate album that departed from the commercially oriented music of her past releases. Her collaborations with songwriters and record producers The-Dream, Tricky Stewart, and Shea Taylor resulted in a more subdued tone that incorporates vocal styles and influences from 1970s and 1980s funk, hip-hop, and soul music. The lyrics address monogamy, female empowerment, and self-reflection, reflecting Beyoncé's effort to convey a more mature message and assert artistic credibility.
Beyoncé promoted 4 in mid-2011 through television and festival performances, including a headlining set at the Glastonbury Festival. The album received generally positive reviews by music critics; several publications included it on their year-end lists. In the United States, it became Beyoncé's first album to spend multiple weeks atop the Billboard 200 and has been certified quadruple platinum. The album also peaked at number one in Argentina, Croatia, Ireland, Spain, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Five of its singles reached the Billboard Hot 100: "Run the World (Girls)", "Best Thing I Never Had", "Party", "Love On Top", and "Countdown". At the 55th Annual Grammy Awards (2013), "Love On Top" won Best Traditional R&B Performance.
Background and development Following the release of her third album I Am... Sasha Fierce (2008) and the ensuing world tour, Beyoncé took a career hiatus in 2010 "to live life [and] to be inspired by things again". During her hiatus, she "killed" Sasha Fierce, the aggressive stage alter-ego used in I Am... Sasha Fierce, as she felt she could now merge her two personalities. She severed professional ties with her father and manager Mathew Knowles, who had guided her career since the 1990s with Destiny's Child, noting that the decision made her feel vulnerable.
In an interview for Complex, Beyoncé expressed dissatisfaction with contemporary radio. She intended 4 to help change that status, commenting, "Figuring out a way to get R&B back on the radio is challenging ... With 4, I tried to mix R&B from the '70s and the '90s with rock 'n' roll and a lot of horns to create something new and exciting. I wanted musical changes, bridges, vibrata, live instrumentation and classic songwriting." On her website she wrote, "The album is definitely an evolution. It's bolder than the music on my previous albums because I'm bolder. The more mature I become and the more life experiences I have, the more I have to talk about. I really focused on songs being classics, songs that would last, songs that I could sing when I'm 40 and when I'm 60." Beyoncé also sought to make more artistic music, rather than purely commercially oriented songs.
Although much of 4s inspiration came from "touring, traveling, watching rock bands and attending festivals", the album's early musical direction was influenced by Nigerian Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti, whose passion for music motivated Beyoncé. She worked with the band from Fela!, the Broadway musical based on Kuti's life. DJ Swivel, one of 4s engineers, later described how Kuti's use of percussion and horns influenced the track "End of Time". In 2015, The-Dream revealed that he and Beyoncé had composed a whole album based on Kuti's music, although it was scrapped in favor of creating 4, explaining how "End of Time" became so heavily influenced.
She also found additional influences in Earth, Wind & Fire, The Stylistics, Lauryn Hill, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson. She used hip-hop for a "broader sound" and looked to bring soul singing back, stating, "I used a lot of the brassiness and grittiness in my voice that people hear in my live performances, but not necessarily on my records."
Recording and production
Three months into her hiatus, in March 2010, Beyoncé began recording at her husband Jay-Z's Roc the Mic Studios in New York City. One song—"Party"—was recorded because she wanted to see what working relationship would develop with engineer DJ Swivel. Kanye West assisted the production of "Party" after Beyoncé was impressed by his work on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010). André 3000, the only featured artist on 4, contributed a rap verse to the song, which he recorded in Georgia.
Six weeks later, in May 2010, she asked Swivel to work on the entire project. Concerning his working relationship with Beyoncé, he commented, "There was no 'We're doing this today.' It was a very kind of open project, where whatever she felt like recording at that time was what we'd work on. It was based on how she felt, her mood, and also her listening to the demos that writers would give us." With Swivel, she experimented with horns, drums, guitars and percussion instruments. Mostly inspired by the Fela! sessions, Swivel began to formulate beats using their own recordings and those from Fela! The project was moved to KMA Studios for a week and a half because Roc the Mic was not large enough. There, they began recording "I Care", "Best Thing I Never Had" and "Rather Die Young", and completed "Party". They recorded the songs "Schoolin' Life", "1+1" and "Start Over" at Jungle City Studios in New York.
MSR Studios was the final New York City-based studio used, and where most of 4 was recorded—only "Party" and "I Was Here" were recorded entirely at other studios. At MSR, Beyoncé emphasized the use of live instruments on songs such as "I Care" and "End of Time". Consequently, most of the instruments, including drums, keyboards, guitar and bass work, were recorded there and were performed by Jeff Bhasker and Shea Taylor. Beyoncé asked Frank Ocean to write and record "I Miss You" at MSR, saying to Complex, "[Jay-Z] had a CD playing in the car one Sunday when we were driving to Brooklyn. I noticed his tone, his arrangements, and his storytelling. I immediately reached out to him—literally the next morning. I asked him to fly to New York and work on my record."
After listening to each song, Beyoncé often requested the addition of specific instruments, leaving her production team to make the sounds cohesive. Her vocals were recorded through an Avalon Design 737 preamp and compressed in a 1176 Peak Limiter with a 4:1 ratio. After recording the lead vocals for a track, Swivel cut them in different ways and he and Beyoncé picked the best, before recording the backing vocals. Beyoncé composed her own vocal arrangements and harmonies for each song. Her microphones were carefully placed to achieve a blend of sounds with a clear quality. Swivel spoke of her work ethic in an interview for Sound on Sound:
After the move to MSR, Beyoncé and her production team began traveling internationally. In the United Kingdom, they worked at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Wiltshire—particularly using Gabriel's multi-instrument room—to create "Love On Top". Soon after, Beyoncé joined Jay-Z in a Sydney mansion, as he was working on his collaboration album Watch the Throne (2011) with Kanye West. There they created a "primitive studio" using a microphone, an outboard rig, and Pro Tools software to record. Sessions were also held in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Honolulu.
In February 2011, MTV reported the project was nearing completion. 4 was mixed mostly at MixStar Studios in Virginia and mastered at Sterling Sound in New York City. The audio mastering was delayed by a week following the unexpected recording of "I Was Here". Diane Warren had played the song to Jay-Z during a telephone conversation, leading him to put Warren and Beyoncé in contact. In May 2011, Beyoncé submitted seventy-two songs in preparation for the album's release. According to Swivel, an eclectic range of songs were recorded, including ballads, "weird ethereal things" and 1990s R&B and Afrobeat-inspired songs.
Music and lyrics The final version of 4 comprises twelve tracks on the standard edition and eighteen on the deluxe edition—three of which are remixes of "Run the World (Girls)". Critics viewed 4 as a major departure from Beyoncé's previous catalog, with a distinctive more subdued sound. The album consists mostly of mid-tempo R&B songs, with 1970s funk, 1980s pop and 1990s soul influences. The second half is more eclectic, exploring a variety of genres including hard rock, reggae and adult contemporary. The Guardian wrote that the album's divergence from the "layering [of] Euro-synths on pop-step woomphs" set it apart from the music of Beyoncé's contemporaries.
The balladry of the first half of 4 combines diverse vocal styles with the use of live instrumentation. "1+1" demonstrates Beyoncé's vocal-flexing over "magnificent guitar bombast" and a soft backing beat, while "Start Over", a mid-tempo R&B ballad, uses a futuristic rhythm with electric elements and synthesizers. "I Miss You", with its "layers of atmospheric keyboards", ambient synthesizers and tinny 808 drums was sung in a half-whisper to convey intense emotion. "I Was Here", an understated pop-R&B ballad with indie rock inflections, primarily concerns self-reflection and features dramatic vocals.
On other songs, Beyoncé explores womanhood. "Best Thing I Never Had", 4s fourth track, has been described as a moment of self-realization and a "female call to arms". With vocals that allude to a "wounded bird turned resilient lioness", the song is built on a "winkly piano riff and beefy bass drums". "Dance for You" conveys a more sexual tone through breathy vocals and blaring electric guitars. It forgoes Beyoncé's typical empowerment themes in favor of sensual imagery and comfort with one's partner. "Run the World (Girls)", a female empowerment anthem reminiscent of Beyoncé's more contemporary work on I Am... Sasha Fierce, uses an energetic sample of Major Lazer's "Pon de Floor". The song incorporates "layered melodics", most prominently a military marching drumbeat, while Beyoncé's near-chanted delivery encompasses her full vocal range.
The tracks "Countdown" and "End of Time" were distinguished by their musical and lyrical experimentalism. "Countdown" was described as "everywhere on the genre map", although predominantly dancehall-led with a "bristling brass arrangement". Its chorus describes a relationship by counting backwards from ten, using a sample from Boyz II Men's "Uhh Ahh". "End of Time"s pulsating, brass sound—reminiscent of a marching-band—was heavily influenced by Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti. Kuti's use of horns and percussion instruments was recreated and combined with elements of electronic music and synthesizers. "Lay Up Under Me" is also built on retro horns, featuring upbeat vocals, a sound Ryan Dombal of Pitchfork associated with Michael Jackson's 1979 album Off the Wall.