Written by Jada Dukes, Staff Writer

Grammy Award winning pop icon Beyoncé Knowles caused quite the stir earlier this month with her remarkable performance at the 2016 Super Bowl 50 half-time show. On Jan 7 it was announced that the singer was to perform alongside fellow musicians, Bruno Mars and Coldplay. On Feb 6, the day before the big performance, Beyoncé shocked everyone by quietly releasing a brand new music video for her new song “Formation.”

While this isn’t the first time Queen Bey has dropped new music on us without any promotion whatsoever, the singer was still able to generate an overwhelming buzz on the Internet. Because both the song and the music video were so transparently pro-black that even a three year old would be able to grasp the message Beyoncé sending, social media was lit ablaze with anticipation.

There was a lot of speculation as to whether or not the songstress would be performing her new single at the halftime show and luckily Bey did not disappoint. The 34-year-old singer stepped out in an all-black ensemble with a posse of female dancers dressed as the black panthers in celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the Black Panther party’s founding. Beyoncé killed her performance per usual and pretty much stole the show. But sadly, not everyone was as dazzled by her performance.

Beyoncé received a lot of hateful comments after her performance from Twitter users and even news reporters. Some Twitter users created the hashtag, #boycottbbeyonce to go along with their mean comments. Most of the unkind tweets criticized Beyoncé for celebrating the black panthers at the super bowl and even went as far as to call her a racist.

Popular online republican commentator, Tomi Lahren said that Beyoncé was seeking “attention” with her the performance and that the halftime show had “become a way to politicize and advance the notion that black lives matter more.”

Beyoncé absolutely was trying to get attention at the halftime show but she most definitely was not trying to put focus on herself. It was obvious throughout her music video and throughout her halftime performance that Beyoncé wanted to bring forth the issue of police brutality within the black community on the largest platform possible.

She had her dancers dressed as the Black Panther party because the Black Panthers were an organization that fought against police brutality. Beyoncé is a notable celebrity who understands that she has a lot of influence over the younger generation and she is using her influence to bring awareness to a problem that has plagued the black community for far too long.

This month Beyoncé showed the world that while she is an internationally known singer, dancer, and performer, she is still a black woman with a black husband and a black child living in a country where black people are killed every day for no reason.