Renaissance is inherently about bodies undulating in the dark, under strobes sexual agency and the Black queer and trans women who are both politicized and the most endangered people among us. Maybe she joined one of the copious DJ sets streamed on Zoom and Twitch in 2020 with a burner account, as many of us were dreaming of people outlined by wisps of a fog machine, craving sound-system affirmations that we were still corporeal entities too. It’s hard to imagine that Beyoncé’s been able to go to the kinds of clubs celebrated on Renaissance since, say, 1999. Maybe Beyoncé and her extensive array of producers and co-writers, which includes mainstream names like Raphael Saadiq and The-Dream as well as more underground artists like the Black trans DJ/producer Honey Dijon and the Dominican musician and visual artist Kelman Duran, spent the last two years digging in the crates. She dedicates the album to her “godmother,” Uncle Jonny, who died of complications stemming from HIV, and to the “pioneers who originate culture… the fallen angels whose contributions have gone unrecognized for far too long.” She enlists Grace Jones, Sheila E., Nile Rodgers samples Teena Marie, Chicago house artist Lidell Townsell, and Atlanta rapper Kilo Ali belts with abandon and fealty to styles from the 1970s through the 1990s that signify a loose writing process, implying the notorious perfectionist meant what she said. (Beyoncé has never been this horny in public.) Release your job, sure-if you can afford it Beyoncé is her own boss, after all-but most importantly, revel in who you are. The love songs are almost entirely aimed inward, to the self and her crew, and the songs about a “boy” are underpinned with a libidinous frankness.
Unlike Lemonade or 2013’s Beyoncé, Renaissance sticks to the dancefloor-no ballads or breakup paeans, just pure energy, propulsive BPMs, and fuck-’em-all strut. Renaissance is a feat of imagination, daydreaming about partying in the pandemic, capturing the feeling of thinking about all the places you wish you could have gone when you were just stuck in the crib. She’s under a strobe, flipping her hair, twirling that ass like she came up out the South, as she raps on the ebullient “Church Girl,” praying to god over a Clark Sisters sample and then squaring the propriety on a Trigger Man beat, bussing it with the godly state of being “born free.” Inside Renaissance’s vast tent, there’s a safe place at the roller rink (“Virgo’s Groove”), at the disco (“Summer Renaissance”), at the subwoofer contest (“America Has a Problem”), at Freaknik (“Thique”), in church, at the NOLA hole-in-the-wall hosting the bounce party after church, at the ball in the Harlem community center, right underneath the basketball hoops.
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In the liner notes posted on her website, she writes that Renaissance, her seventh solo album and “Act I” of a mysterious trilogy, is a “safe place, a place without judgment… a place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking.” In turn she pays homage to the true safe places for many of her fans, celebrating the clubs made by and for Black women and queer people, Black Chicagoans and Detroiters and New Yorkers who created house and techno, Black and Latinx ball and kiki houses. For nearly a decade she has made pop music on her own terms, uninterested in the dusty edicts of the music industry and pointed about her intended audience now pop fans bend to Beyoncé, not the other way around.īeyoncé is hooked on the feeling of self-expression. As our biggest pop stars increasingly turn to dance music for inspiration, Beyoncé focused her famous work ethic on the nuances of club culture for a challenging, densely-referenced album that runs circles around her similarly minded, Billboard-charting peers. By centering her music within the context of HBCU culture, incorporating a massive marching band, a step show, and J-setting choreography, she delivered a tectonic performance that also ensured all her fans would see the lineage of Black art receive the credit it’s due.Īnd when the pandemic hit, Beyoncé caught on to what her fans missed most: the unfettered joy of gathering together in the club, rolling face and sweating as a collective body.
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Recall 2019’s Homecoming, the live album and concert movie documenting her vaunted “Beychella” festival set, in which she indelibly framed her entire discography within the larger history of contemporary Black American performance.
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