Beyoncé introduces us to a new incarnation, Yoncé, in this two-part club jam. Her new alter ego is someone who likes her grill and being the hottest girl in the club. Beyoncé recalled the creation of Yoncé during an album screening party oat the School of Visual Arts Theatre in New York. "We were in the studio, and Justin Timberlake started beating on buckets," she said. "So, when you hear the beat, it's literally a bucket. And [The-Dream] just started, 'Yonce on his mouth like liquor,' and I'm like, 'What does that mean?'"
"But I love it, I think Beyoncé is Beyoncé, Mrs. Carter is Beyoncé, Sasha Fierce is Beyoncé," she continued. "And I'm finally at a place where I don't have to separate the two. It's all pieces of me, and just different elements of a personality of a woman, because we are complicated."
The track opens with the call-and-response that Beyoncé pumps the crowd with before going to "Get Me Bodied" every night on tour.
The video for the "Yoncé" section was shot in Brooklyn by director Ricky Saiz and features Beyoncé with the supermodels Chanel Iman, Joan Smalls and Jourdan Dunn. Saiz told MTV News that the R&B star and him created a clip that focused on the themes of "voyeurism and kind of erotic sexuality rather than overt sexuality."
Saiz added that it was, in part, inspired by George Michael's iconic "Freedom" visual, which featured a bevy of supermodels like Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Cindy Crawford. "I just tried to bring like a raw, kind of lo-fi, very New York kind of grimy, dark aesthetic to it," he said.
Saix explained why Beyoncé doesn't sing in the video. "She almost plays like a madam character and the girls are doing the performing for her in a sense," he said. "I think they are so important individually and have their own characters and they each really brought that to the set... [It's] almost like this just happened and we were there with our cameras."
The video finishes with Beyoncé walking down the runway, while photographers snap photos of her. Saiz told MTV News: "We knew the ending of the song was a transition into another song and the last line of the song is 'Welcome to Paris' and there's bulbs flashing and kind of a paparazzi sense. So we wanted to kind of have something that captured that high-flash paparazzi kind of feel and with a runway walk, it made sense in context with the models and left it quiet vague. And I thought it looked beautiful and an easy transition into the next video [which is 'Partition']."
The second half of the song, "Partition," refers to the privacy window in limousines - asking the driver to "roll up the partition" means he can't see what's going on back there, and Beyoncé can carry out her prurient intentions, as it quickly becomes clear she is singing about making love in the limousine.
Beyoncé sings in French on the bridge, where she criticizes those who believe feminists are not interested in sex. It translates as:
"Do you like sex? Sex I mean physical activity, coitus You like it? Are you not interested in sex? Men think that feminists hate sex But it's an exciting and natural activity that women love."
The Partition video features Beyoncé dancing semi-naked. She discussed stripping in one of her series of of short featurettes on YouTube: "I was 195lbs when I gave birth. I lost 65lbs. I worked crazily to get my body back. I wanted to show my body," the singer explained. "I wanted to show that you can have a child and you can work hard and you can get your body back."
"I know that there's so many women that feel the same thing after they give birth.," Beyoncé continued. "You can have your child and you can still have fun and still be sexy and still have dreams and still live for yourself."
The Partition clip was inspired by a trip to the famous Crazy Horse strip club in Paris. "I'm not embarrassed about it, and I don't feel like I have to protect that side of me because I do believe that sexuality is a power we all have," said Beyoncé. "The day I got engaged was my husband's birthday and I took him to Crazy Horse and I remember thinking, 'Damn, these girls are fly.' And I just thought it was the ultimate sexy show: 'I wish I was up there, I wish I could perform that for my man...' so that's what I did for my video."
Beyoncé references how Bill Clinton splooged on White House intern Monica Lewinsky's skirt during their infamous sexual encounters.
He popped all my buttons, and he ripped my blouse He Monica Lewinsky-ed all on my gown
Speaking to the May 8, 2014 edition of Vanity Fair, Lewinsky issued a rebuttal to the scandalous couplet, saying, "Thanks, Beyoncé, but if we're verbing, I think you meant 'Bill Clinton'd all on my gown,' not 'Monica Lewinsky'd.'"
The conservative TV show host Bill O'Reilly got worked up over the "Partition" video, playing part of it on his show and asking his guest, music mogul Russell Simmons, to explain why she make such an explicit video. O'Reilly went on about how harmful the video and this type of entertainment is to young girls, and calling it "exploitive garbage." Simmons didn't take the bait, as he wanted to talk about his meditation initiatives, but many left-wing commentators later pointed out that the sex portrayed in the video was between a married couple.
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