Names and faces

Beyonce has released her new album in an unconventional way: She announced and issued it on the same day. The singer released Beyonce exclusively on iTunes early Friday. The move mirrors how Jay Z released Magna Carta Holy Grail earlier this year - through a deal with Samsung where he gave the album to 1 million users of Galaxy mobile phones days before its official release. Beyonce’s fifth effort features 14 songs and 17 videos. Jay Z, Drake and Frank Ocean make guest appearances on the album, while the closing track, “Blue,” features her daughter Blue Ivy. Justin Timberlake co-wrote the songs “Rocket” and “Partition,” and Pharrell, Timbaland, Ryan Tedder, Miguel and Sia also co-wrote tracks. The album caused a stir on social-media websites, with fans posting about the release Friday morning.Twitter said early data show mentions of Beyonce spiked by 500,000-plus tweets after she announced the album. Billboard said Friday that Beyonce will likely debut on top of its charts next week.

How seriously did Saturday Night Live take the furor around its lack of a black female performer? Seriously enough to hold a special audition Monday night on the SNL stage for seven or eight candidates, one of whom will be hired and will join the cast for shows beginning in January. The show’s creator and executive producer, Lorne Michaels, said in an interview Thursday that he had committed to that timetable to add the show’s first black woman since Maya Rudolph left the series in 2007. Several casting sessions were held over the past few weeks leading to this week’s audition. “All told we’ve seen about 25 people,” Michaels said. “A lot of the people we saw are really good. Hopefully we’ll come out of the process well.” He said he believed that as many as two performers could potentially be considered, but he did not want to add too many women at this time because the cast already includes five. SNL had been subjected to a barrage of criticism over the past several months over what seemed to be a glaring absence on the comedy show, which has had relatively few black female performers in its long history. The criticism was kicked off by comments from two of the show’s black cast members, Jay Pharaoh, who said the show needed to “follow up” on the promise to add a black woman, and Kenan Thompson, who announced that he did not want to do any more drag impressions of black women.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 12/14/2013

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