Beyonce on a roll with new album

BEYONCE ( bottom, right) has surprised the music world with her new release, Lemonade, which takes on the theme of race relations and appears to offer some deeply-personal insights into her marriage to rapper Jay Z.

The album, Beyonce’s sixth, immediately became a sensation on the internet when it debuted on Saturday night, and remained a hot topic when it became available Monday for purchase on iTunes and Amazon.

African-American online magazine The Root called the album and video “a hot cauldron of fury”.

Released together with an hourlong video, the album is an ode to black females. Her angry lyrics and a ragefilled video more than hint at marital strife.

“He only want me when I’m not on there. He better call Becky with the good hair,” Beyonce sings in Sorry.

In another song, Pray You Catch Me, she sings: “You can taste the dishonesty. It’s all over your breath as you pass it off so carefully.”

Beyonce and Jay Z married on April 4, 2008, in a secret wedding ceremony. They have a four-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy.

Beyonce herself is known for being intensely private, which has made the content of the album all the more surprising.

Along with the experience of heartbreak, Beyonce also sings about her father having warned her about the perils of being married to an adulterous man. The album and video include a tribute to the mothers of Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin, two young black men whose deaths heightened a bitter debate over race relations in the US. Tennis star Serena Williams also appears in the video, twerking alongside Beyonce in a body suit. – dpa