'It's very much the sort of al­bum a pop star makes when she doesn't feel like she has any­thing to prove,' one crit­ic writes. So al­though Be­y­onc&ea­cute;'s lat­est al­bum, 4, was still weeks from its of­fi­cial re­lease date, two Wednes­days ago it was leaked and quick­ly caused a stir on the In­ter­net, prompt­ing fans and crit­ics to weigh in on the singer's first new al­bum in near­ly three years. So far, B's pro­mo for 4 has been fu­eled by the re­lease of tracks like the snarling "Run the World (Girls)", the track "Best Thing I Nev­er Had," and the emo­tion­al "1+1." But now that all of the tracks are out there on the Net, Be­y­onc&ea­cute;'s al­bum is up for de­bate.

The At­lantic com­pares her lat­est to her last al­bum: "In be­tween, there's an un­mis­tak­able, if grad­ual, turn from melan­cholic top 40 bal­lads to the con­fronta­tion­al snap of mil­i­tary drums and gid­dy procla­ma­tions of love. Is this I Am ... Sasha Fierce part 2? Not quite. The course of 4 doc­u­ments a pro­gres­sion, a mat­u­ra­tion, of Be­y­onc&ea­cute;'s world­view." Rolling Stone ob­serves, "Be­y­onc&ea­cute;'s new al­bum, 4, is a change of pace for the R&B queen ... 4 is a more re­laxed, per­son­al set that em­pha­sizes bal­lads over bangers and show­cas­es the singer's nu­ances; it's very much the sort of al­bum a pop star makes when she doesn't feel like she has any­thing to prove."

Ol­o­gy.com gives Be­y­onc&ea­cute; cred­it for work­ing with so many pro­duc­ers on the al­bum, but mak­ing it all sound "co­he­sive." "It stands quite eas­i­ly as Knowles' most vi­brant al­bum; not say­ing it's her best (B'Day still holds that ti­tle), but it begs to be per­formed live in front of hun­dreds of thou­sands of scream­ing fans un­like any­thing else she's re­leased yet." Fans seem equal­ly opin­ion­at­ed, and en­thu­si­as­tic, about the al­bum which of­fi­cial­ly drops on June 28. "This al­bum is so not her, she took chances, went off in a new di­rec­tion as far as sound, her vo­cal tech­niques are off the charts on this al­bum," Lee Joseph Chais­son wrote on MTV.com. "She brought it vo­cal­ly; the sounds are so unique­ly dif­fer­ent, her whole ap­proach."

B's most de­vot­ed al­so took to her Face­book page to put their two cents in. Tatyana Krasko wrote, "Be­y­once thanks for great work...Al­bum '4' it's amaz­ing... I love Be­y­once." An­oth­er fan, Sun­ny Lochab, gave the singer props and said he was buy­ing the al­bum re­gard­less of the leak. "I down­loaded it. I couldn't help it - every­one was talk­ing about it! and I com­plete­ly love it – I'll be buy­ing it too to show love! You show true growth on this al­bum...it's ALL love."

www.mtv.com

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