On the midnight that began the morning of Friday, Dec. 13, Beyoncé dropped her fifth solo album on iTunes with no forewarning or publicity whatsoever. The announcement was made through social media and spread through the excited word of mouth of fans.

I was up late studying for the five tests I had the next day, but when I heard on Tumblr about an hour later that Beyoncé had released a new album, I had to go check it out. All four of the rotating banners on iTunes were emblazoned with Beyoncé’s face, and the album was already at number 1 on the charts.  The shock jolted me back into reality, and the music got me to stay up another hour and a half trying to understand chemistry.

Though the initial surprise obviously boosted sales, the album stands on its own merits, with fourteen songs and seventeen videos in the visual album.  Without set deadlines and creatives confines, Beyoncé flourished.  “I didn’t want to release my music the way I’ve done it,” Beyoncé said.  “There’s so much that gets between the music, the artist and the fans. I felt like I didn’t want anybody to give the message when my record is coming out. I just want this to come out when it’s ready…from me to my fans.”

Beyoncé is more personal and intimate than previous albums, with explicit lyrics in many of the songs, including “Drunk In Love (ft. Jay Z),” “Blow,” and “Partition,” which are all as catchy as they are sugesstive.  Beyoncé confesses her insecurity in “Jealous,” singing “I’m just jealous / I’m just human,” and somehow it doesn’t come across as contrived or unbelievable.  “XO,” produced by Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, is sunny, joyful, and probably one the most likely of the album to be heard on the radio.

Female power is reaffirmed in “Flawless,” a feminist anthem sampling parts of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s incredible TED Talk “We Should All Be Feminists.”  Although Beyoncé has produced many girl power anthems previously and Flawless continues in the same vein with “You wake up, flawless… We flawless, ladies tell ’em,” Adichie’s sampled verse is explosive in that it criticizes the ways in which girls are oppressed while Beyoncé raises them up.

Adichie says, “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller… We raise girls to see each other as competitors, not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men.  We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.  Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.”

There is irony in that these same criticisms have been lobbed at Beyoncé by self-professed feminists.  Beyoncé’s feminist icon status has been debated for years.  Was “Single Ladies” feminist?  Is it feminist to want a ring and want a man?  Is it feminist to be sexual?  Is it feminist to sell sex?  Is it feminist to name your tour the “Mrs. Carter Show”?  Is telling girls to “Run the World” feminist?

The conversation is tiring, unnecessary, and pointlessly divisive.  Beyoncé is a grown woman in charge of her body, her life, and her career, and she does so while trying to make others feel good about themselves too.  Beyoncé does what she wants better than anyone else on the planet, and Beyoncé the album is the latest and best of her endeavors thus far.