King Bey decided to gift the world with a surprise fifth studio album. It was made with the help of a crack team of songwriters and producers, including big names Pharrell, The Dream, and Timbaland. But someone who goes by the name of "Boots" is all over the album credits. It made some people on Twitter start asking some questions.
Here’s what’s known: He signed to Jay Z’s record label Roc Nation some time around June 1, when he posted this picture to his Facebook.
He has fewer than 200 Facebook fans. Roc Nation’s website is unhelpful. Some quick googling turns up this short film that features Chanel Iman getting an eye exam. Boots wrote the score for the five-minute short.
A month after making his deal public, he posted to Facebook again, this time with a song called “Haunted.” His voice is pretty haunting and awesome. And with that track is the only available picture of the man behind the Bey. Nice boots, obviously.
But on Boots’ Soundcloud there’s another private file of even greater note. It’s a 50-minute album with some very important tracks. (Update: The album was quickly taken down from Soundcloud in the middle of the night.)
Like reference tracks for Beyoncé.
“Ghost Around” is a part of the song that Beyoncé sings in the video for “Ghost,” “I’m On To You” is the second part of “Haunted,” and “Heaven Couldn’t Wait” ended up being shortened to “Heaven,” the second to last song on the album.
It’s almost strange to hear a man sing Beyoncé material because she clearly is superior to anyone with a Y chromosome.
It is fun to hear the source material that Bey took and spun into gold though. And with the help of Boots, we got our Bey back. Thank you, Boots. We hope to see you around and would love to see your face.
