"The Lion King: The Gift" dropped on Friday day and the song "Brown Skin Girl" has empowered women of colour to embrace the melanin in their skin.
In the song, featuring Blue Ivy Carter, SAINt JHN and Wizkid, Beyoncé sings about brown skin girls having "skin just like pearls" and refers to the "complexities in [their] complexion".
Name dropping Lupita Nyong'o, Naomi Campbell and former Destiny's Child bandmate Kelly Rowland.
Early in the "Spirit" singer's career, she was criticised for a L'Oreal advert where her skin was visibly lightened. The entertainment industry as a whole was geared more towards light-skinned women and racially ambiguous women with darker skinned women often getting the short end of the stick.
However, since taking full control of her image with the establishment of Parkwood Entertainment as the chief executive following the "4" era, Beyoncé has been very conscious in the way she portrays the black culture, specifically black women.
This culminated in her highly acclaimed visual album "Lemonade" which saw the "Hold Up" singer firmly place the black American experience as one of the big themes in it.
In "Brown Skin Girl", "The Lion King" star specifically chooses to highlight dark-skinned women who until recently have had very little representation in media in a positive light.
YouTuber AJayII, who is most known for her colourful music reaction channel, highlighted the importance of "Brown Skin Girl" for darker skin women. In her reaction video, she says: "Some of y'all will never understand how important this is to brown skin girls."
While crying during this specific song, AJayII speaks about the importance of representation and how colourism affects brown skin girls. Stating this song highlights how beautiful the melanin in their skin is.
undefinedThe celebration of brown skin girls is what led to the #BrownSkinGirlChallenge which saw many women of colour on the Twitter streets sharing pictures showing off their rich in melanin skin.
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/hashtag/BrownSkinGirlChallenge?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BrownSkinGirlChallenge
Brand new pics for my Queen 💖 pic.twitter.com/4XMebXLGWD
— Atchoum 🇸🇳 (@KTBeyyy)
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/Beyonce?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Beyonce. You’ve done a beautiful thing here. I see pride. I see joy. #BrownSkinGirlChallenge https://t.co/Qg6coVjb8q
— Ava DuVernay (@ava)
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/hashtag/BrownSkinGirlChallenge?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BrownSkinGirlChallenge pic.twitter.com/CZnIPqgNq6
— i luv Whales 🍃🍁 (@ArielleKn0wles)