The hard-hitting eleventh track from Bey’s self-titled record, “Flawless” is among Beyoncé’s most experimental and influential records. Perhaps the most culturally relevant track on Beyoncé, “Flawless” is largely responsible for pushing the word “feminism” back into the mainstream, and the ubiquitous “I woke up like this” is also the doing of this track.

Musically, Bey expands on a track she had released earlier in 2013, the Hit-Boy-produced “Bow Down / I Been On”.

The original single attracted criticism for what some people felt was Beyoncé’s counter-feminist stance in using the term “bitches”. Bey clarifies her intentions on the album version, incorporating a section from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDxEuston Talk “We Should All Be Feminists.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born 15 September 1977) is a writer from Nigeria. She has been called “the most prominent” of a “procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors that is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature”.