The Addicting Uplift of Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’

No current artist, in music or otherwise, does evolution like Beyoncé. She builds upon her own greatness and deepens it, broadens it, breaks it open, and makes the brightness of her craft more luminescent, the cultural force of her work more earth-moving, culture-shaping, genre-bending. Pop, R&B, hip-hop, Afrobeats, new jack swing, rock, and now ballroom, disco, funk, and house all alchemize under her hand and melt together with her honeyed voice, an instrument that resounds with more depth and potency with age. This is no accident: Since 15 in her stilettos, she’s been strutting in this game—every step exact, the pressure and direction measured—and more than two decades later, her only competition is herself. Debates about her greatest albums are highly fraught, because how can you compare the brushstrokes of the ever-growing masterpiece that is her legacy?

Yet Beyoncé’s latest drop, Renaissance (thrillingly, part one of three), might be the formation of the crest, a summation of everything the biggest artist in the world, a juggernaut superstar, and the icon of my life stands for.

Let me make it known: I am not equipped to review Renaissance. Beyoncé’s talent and commitment to craft—and, crucially, bops—has shaped my life since I began to conceptualize art and inspiration and apply it, philosophically, to my own work. The acknowledgements in my novel note her dedication as a propelling force for my own, as a Black woman, as a creative who loves what she does and loves to share it. The work itself mentions Beyoncé 32 times.

Over the weekend, at a barbecue, I started tearing up just talking about the album, molecularly analyzing her artistry to a partially drunk audience trying to eat their burgers in peace. I imagined them rapt, but I myself was too drunk, both on a warm rum and coke and the way she goes off at the end of “Virgo’s Groove,” to know for sure. I could, of course, methodically break down the genres, the influences, the musicology, but for me, Renaissance is all about id, instinct.

On my first listen, after waking with an electric, anticipatory thrum in my veins that would only intensify with the music, I optimistically thought I could play it as I worked—but sitting still quickly proved impossible. Focusing on anything but rhythm, melody, beat, energy, joy was unfeasible; Renaissance is a party. My response was primal, tears and then dancing, and though I attempted to harness scattered thoughts, they refused traditional structure. Indeed, in Renaissance, Beyoncé is also eschewing conformity, proving herself beyond it. Renaissance as a body of work does not fall in line, but bends it.

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