Beyonce: Lady Sings the Blues

Reporting from New York -- On a recent slate-gray afternoon in New York, Beyonce zipped quickly through the front door of trendy Rivington Hotel on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The singer, her hair pulled back tightly, was wearing an immaculate black suit and perfectly knotted necktie that gave her a playful “Victor\Victoria" look, one suggesting to the gawking bystanders that the Rivington's latest guest just might be the world's most Superfly stockbroker.

Upstairs, in the hotel's window-walled penthouse, the 27-year-old sat back, sipped a glass of water and announced that, like her suit, she was all about business with flair: “ Barbra Streisand, that's the career model for me, I want to be like her. She is just the ultimate. And I want to be an icon too."

It's a bold statement, but Beyonce is someone willing to pursue her goals fearlessly. She got her first record deal when most kids are getting their driver's licenses, and she recently married longtime love Jay-Z, the rapper whose relentless careerism is legend. At this point, she must move past any remaining preconceptions that she's like the character she played in the lavish musical Dreamgirls, a talented beauty without truly defining textures, a torch singer without real fire.