Since its release, Beyoncé’s new album Renaissance has barely left the headlines. If it wasn’t for the removal of an offensive lyric, it was for sampling the singer Kelis in what she called an act of ‘thievery’. Beyoncé removed the offending sample from her album as well. Then Monica Lewinsky took aim at the singer, asking that a lyric about her be removed from a song.
While such controversies may have overshadowed any success for some singers, we are talking about Queen Bey here.
Despite the headlines, Renaissance has gone on to become Beyoncé’s most critically acclaimed album yet – with a current score of 93 on the critical aggregation site Metacritic. This is a higher score than the much lauded Lemonade – her last studio album.
“Beyoncé’s singing here transcends any price tag. The range of her voice nears the galactic; the imagination powering it qualifies as cinema,” The New York Times proclaimed. “These songs are testing this music, celebrating how capacious it is, how pliable.”
And while the bar she sets for her music seems unparalleled, it’s Beyoncé’s principles that also matter especially during her creative process.
The singer’s father spoke out recently about these principles, and how the singer was helping Black songwriters behind the scenes.
“Beyoncé’s mother and I raised Beyoncé with the right principles since she was a child, to use her power and influence to open doors for emerging and marginalised people so I’m very proud of her for that," Mathew Knowles said.
However, it is the queer Black influence on electronic dance music (EDM) that is central to this latest album. As mentioned in Oprah Daily: “Renaissance carries the weight of Black musical genealogies and geographies.”
"A big thank you to my Uncle Jonny. He was my godmother and the first person to expose me to a lot of the music and culture that serve as inspiration for this album. Thank you to all of the pioneers who originate culture, to all of the fallen angels whose contributions have gone unrecognized for far too long. This is a celebration for you."
For many people this album is the sound of hedonism, and the queer Black experience.
“'Renaissance' is brimming with excitement and exploration. It’s an homage Black joy, queer culture, pleasure and the liberation of the dance floor," Variety proclaimed, going on to call this album, “a deliciously euphoric, indulgent, over-sexed ode to the Black LGBTQ+ community."
As Professor Daphne A Brooks wrote in The Guardian: “It is the third year of a pandemic in which we continue to struggle to keep our bodies well and gradually learn how to make contact again with other bodies. There’s no end in sight to the forever fresh and brutal anti-Black, anti-Brown, anti-queer, anti-trans and anti-woman pandemic. Into this midst, Beyoncé has unleashed a reclamation of the pleasure to be found in our own flesh.”
Ultimately, Renaissance is the sound of letting go and bringing in joy. As Beyoncé herself mentioned in her interview with Harper's Bazaar last year: "With all the isolation and injustice over the past year, I think we are all ready to escape, travel, love and laugh again. I feel a renaissance emerging, and I want to be part of nurturing that escape in any way possible.”
At the time no one seemed to notice the major spoiler that the singer gave away with that line.
In the end, this album is one that makes you get up and dance, or as Beyoncé puts it on her website: "I hope it inspires you to release the wiggle." So wiggle away fans. Wiggle away!
