At
Metacritic, which assigns a
normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received a weighted average score of 77, based on 13 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
The Lion King: The Gift was chosen as
The New York Times's Critic's Pick, with
Jon Pareles writing that "Beyoncé flexes both her musicianship and her cultural leverage... It's her latest lesson in commandeering mass-market expectations, as she bends
The Lion King to her own agenda of
African-diaspora unity, self-worth, parental responsibility and righteous ambition." A.D. Amorosi for
Variety praises the album as "a wild, wonderful offering dedicated to sounds and soul of the motherland", calling it an "offering to the idea of bringing connection to those who never realized such was possible, maintaining heritage in the face of aborted and abbreviated histories". Describing it as an album "that ably displays [Beyoncé's] excellent taste, rather than a great Beyoncé album per se,"
Alexis Petridis of
The Guardian writes that
The Lion King: The Gift gives "the dominant Afrobeats sound a vast new level of exposure – an impressive feat in itself". "Beyoncé's
Lion King album is the event the movie wishes it could be," writes
Carl Wilson of
Slate, arguing that
The Gift "works best if you forget the remake even exists" and encouraging listeners to "take it more as a (mildly) new perspective on Beyoncé" since thematically the album "
transliterates the leonine royal-family drama and 'circle of life' worldview of [the movie] into the recent main
leitmotif of Beyoncé's own work." "An ambitious companion album that says more than the movie does about family and tradition and responsibility and Africa", writes Mikael Wood of
Los Angeles Times. "No one takes possession of a cultural space like Beyoncé. We saw it happen in 2016 when she easily outshone
Coldplay during its own
Super Bowl halftime performance. We saw it happen last year when she remade the
world's most prestigious music festival as
Beychella. Now we’re seeing it again with
Disney's new version of
The Lion King". Michelle Kim for
Pitchfork opines that the album "succeeds in introducing a whole new musical universe to the average American listener". Writing for
The Telegraph, Neil McCormick says, "
The Gift is a quixotic compilation of tracks", calling the album a "tipping point" for African artists worldwide.
Bernadette Giacomazzo of
HipHopDX also praised the album, saying that the album "trips the black fantastic" and that many songs were capable of standing independent of the film. Drawing comparisons to the
Black Panther soundtrack "down to the
Kendrick Lamar appearance," Giacomazzo says that the album is "one of the first Beyoncé albums—such as it were—in which Mrs.Carter's creativity serves as a
vector to another creative vision, rather than as the creative vision itself. Overall, it works and is another jewel in her crown — one that she, overall, can be proud to call hers". == Accolades ==