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Beyonce - Renaissance - (Vinyl LP, CD) | Rough Trade

My first copy of this came with the incorrect vinyl for disc 1. Instead of Renaissance, it was Creedence Clearwater Revival. First announced through Tidal, Renaissance will drop on 29 July – the first time since 2013’s self-titled visual album that Beyoncé has given advance warning of a release. The record’s first single, “Break My Soul”, was expected to premiere on 21 June at midnight EST, but actually dropped three hours earlier on Tidal. Could the same happen for the full album? “Break My Soul” is a taste of what’s to come The full credits were released on 21 July, which show that the album includes features from Jay-Z, Drake, Skrillex, 070 Shake, The-Dream and Tems (!) along with samples of Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Teena Marie and James Brown. Get ready to get down! The dates are meaningfulAnd 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. 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. 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.

RENAISSANCE Lyrics and Tracklist | Genius Beyoncé - RENAISSANCE Lyrics and Tracklist | Genius

Break My Soul” was intentionally released to align with the summer solstice on 21 June and mark the start of a “new era with new anthems”, as reported by Pitchfork. But there is another meaningful date the song release coincides with: Bey’s debut album Dangerously In Love came out on 20 June 2003, the record that saw her become the queen of both pop and R&B – as well as dabbling in country and rap. Looks like she might be closing that chapter, and taking over as the queen of dance imminently. The album took two years of sleepless nightsIn the 2018 book Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric, professor and musician Madison Moore captures the innovation of certain queer aesthetics: “The fact that beautiful eccentrics put themselves on the line every day despite the odds shows how important they are not only as aesthetic geniuses but political activists too.” Beyoncé, of course, has a gigantic bank account and a team of people to help her look extravagant—“It should cost a billion to look that good/But she make it look easy ’cause she got it,” as she vamps on “Pure/Honey”—and to make the kind of fantasy she’s crafted on Renaissance plausible, from the Swarovski-encrusted imagery to the refinement of the album’s song choices. But using her global proscenium to showcase the work of marginalized people, as the political and legal scapegoating of their existences ramps up to a terrifying degree—including draconian legislation in her home state of Texas—is important, even a rejoinder to 2014’s big FEMINIST sign moment, a subtle kiss-off to people who’ve made vilifying trans women a cornerstone of their feminism by making space for all sorts of femme expression.