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The original lineup included LaTavia Roberson, Kelly Rowland, Támar Davis, and sisters Nikki and Nina Taylor. IRL, Beyoncé debuted in the sextet Girl’s Tyme in 1990 at just 9 year old.
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In Swarm reality, Ni’Jah burst onto the scene as a member of the girl group Xllent, a precursor to the girl group that would make her famous, according to a news report after the surprise release of her album Festival. You know, Jay-Z’s hometown that goes so hard. For the Swarm version, the couple stand, hands clasped, on the Brooklyn Bridge.
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You’d have to be living under a rock to miss the picture that calls back to that famous tableaux of the Carters, wearing whimsically colored pink and blue suits and dripping with diamonds and gold in front of the Mona Lisa. Though the real-life song dropped in June 2018 to accompany the album Everything Is Love, this spoof is one of many overt references to Bey’s oeuvre. During an economical montage of Ni’Jah paraphernalia, we see an image of the fictional pop star and her husband Caché (her Jay-Z, played by Stephen Glover) that’s eerily similar to the “Apeshit” music video. The pilot uses Dre’s bedroom shrine to give viewers a concise introduction to the Beyoncé avatar. The speculation leaves Dre seeing red - and with motive to go after the internet trolls who disrespected her beloved sister’s memory (and Ni’Jah antis, of course). There was a lot of texting between Houstonians being like, ‘Yo, who is this Marissa Jackson? Is this a true story?’ And that existed on the internet for a while, and people were tweeting really horrible things about this woman who had killed herself and making fun of her.” In Swarm, Marissa’s death also goes viral, and internet users guess that she died following the release of Ni’Jah’s album Festival that dropped in April 2016, which is analogous to Lemonade. “I’m from Houston, Texas, and my very best friend’s last name is Jackson. “There was a rumor about a woman named Marissa Jackson who committed suicide after watching this visual album because it basically confirmed that a very powerful man was cheating on one of the most incredibly beautiful and successful pop stars of our time,” Nabers told Shondaland. There is no evidence that the viral rumor is true, but that didn’t stop the creators from borrowing the tale. In real life, Twitter gossip once spread about a Beyoncé stan named Marissa Jackson, who reportedly died by suicide following the release of Lemonade in April 2016. A fight that grows out of Dre’s irritation with Marissa’s cheating boyfriend dominoes into the latter’s death by suicide, inadvertently triggering Dre’s bloody rampage. Dre, perpetually unemployed, can’t seem to forge a life for herself outside of Ni’Jah and her insistence on keeping Marissa, the woman at the center of her only mutual relationship, stiflingly close. Marissa’s life doesn’t only revolve around her standom - though a previous, unexplained suicide attempt left her with a scar on her wrist, she has fun with friends, sleeps with her boyfriend (Damson Idris), and keeps a job at the local mall to pay both their rent. (Yes, Beyoncé is from Houston.) Despite Marissa’s unwavering and unconditional support of her other half, the first episode reveals a deep rupture in their sisterly bond.
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(The serial killer’s adoptive parents returned her to the orphanage after a sleepover gone wrong, erasing all memory of Dre’s presence in their lives.) Offscreen, they made their way back to one another and live in their hometown of Houston, Texas, together as adults. “We presented everything: ‘This is not a work of fiction.’ That’s the first thing you see when you look at this show.”Ĭhloë Bailey, the R&B singer and Beyoncé’s protégé, plays Marissa Jackson - Dre’s foster sister and the only family that she has left. “We approached with a lot of respect,” Nabers said in an interview with Vulture. The references are cherry-picked and purposefully unsubtle, but they are many. Swarm takes place between 20, though it calls on events from both in and outside of the show’s time frame (including Beyoncé’s Renaissance-era aesthetics). Throughout Dre’s cross-country murder spree, pivotal Beyoncé-inspired events and real-life cultural moments - including surprise album drops, the birth of Ni’Jah’s twins, and some shit going down when there’s a billion dollars on an elevator - provide the backdrop for all the killing and shape the show’s plotline. Brown, who danced in Beyoncé’s Coachella performance), a blatantly obvious stand-in for Queen Bey.
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The Prime Video series from Atlanta’s Janine Nabers and Donald Glover follows a lonely, terminally online stan, Dre ( Dominique Fishback), who worships a singer, her own personal goddess, Ni’Jah (Nirine S. Swarm is buzzing with Beyoncé references.
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