Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE has a New Attitude

The album is a natural celebration of the artist's own myth, and a rebellion against the restrictions of the artist's perfectionism.

Image Credit: Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia

Renaissance is an hour-long dance floor anthology in sixteen sections. Many artists would struggle with a myth as big as Beyoncé’s. In Renaissance, however, she proves her freedom from her own myth by reveling in it. She dips into it here and there, like with some of the beautiful vocal gymnastics in Virgo’s Groove, but many times, she leaves it behind along with her obsession with musical perfection. In Renaissance, Beyoncé tells us she is in control, and we are along for the ride.

Pop has been touching dance again recently. It has been finding that groove and pulse that causes the body to move like the DJ makes it do. But it has been approaching dance, very staunchly, from the perspective and with the sensibilities of pop. Renaissance chuckles at this approach. There’s nothing pop about this approach to dance music. If anything, this is dance saying, “Look at me, I am pop now.” This approach of going “Vision first. Genre? Of course,” is one that resonates with the new generation of music enthusiasts.  

Renaissance is dance music drawing from the past and pulling the present in its wake. Renaissance is an hour in the club under strobe lights bumping against the bodies of others reveling in the same freedom that perfuses the air. There is space to grab a drink, air to breathe, and relaxed grooves to either cool your heels to or bust out the more elaborate moves, but all of it is pure ebullient dance music infused with that energy. There is no ballad. Nothing curated to emphasize an impossible riff or run (though when you do run into those runs, they put you in a mood!) Beyoncé isn’t trying to convince us she can sing. If you don’t know that by now, you probably never will. Beyoncé isn’t trying to convince us of anything. 

I’m That Girl begins and ends with a challenge. And if you’re not going to try stopping her, you might as well dance. The pulse in this first part of the album is a heavy thing, pushing you through the first few tracks on a trolley that doesn’t stop.

Many of Beyoncé’s projects have celebrated blackness, and this album does too. Cozy has a sample of Ts Madison that says, “I’m not brown, dark skin, light skin, beige, fluorescent beige. I’m black.” But Renaissance celebrates not just blackness, but queer blackness. The black influence on this album is not Gucci Mane or Future. Instead, its Big Freedia, Syd and Grace Jones. It’s Moi Renee and Honey Dijon and DJ MikeQ. All of whom and more are credited on the album. They are sampled and featured, to the extent that Renaissance is probably a very expensive album for it. What this results in is a queer history and flavor that is apparent from the very first beat. Renaissance is as much house music as it is pop.

Alien Superstar has a beautiful synth chorus that almost demands you put your hand up in the air and declare that you are indeed wearing a unicorn. The way the instrumentation of that chorus pulls you into the message of the song nearly makes this my favorite song of the entire album. And the way all the melody cuts off for the verse— Oof! Go listen. 

Image Credit: Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia

Cuff It helps you recover from Alien Superstar, as well as provides one of those relaxed grooves I talked about earlier. It is for settling into the music, because the first three tracks have primed you for this album. Energy (feat. Beam), and the track that was previously released as a single, Break My Soul, follow seamlessly, like one long song in three sections.

On Church Girl, Renaissance makes you realize that there’s been some church in this music for a while, and you think, “since when?” If you go back, you’ll hear it in Break My Soul (“I’m taking my new salvation” is in a choir’s exulting voice). But Church Girl isn’t interested in being clean. It gets distinctly horny, the (repressed?)-sexuality-exploding-in-your-face kind of horny

Plastic Off The Sofa is the first thing that resembles a love song. Beyoncé’s voice goes soft and breathy here, but make no mistake, this is the kind of love song you experience pressed against each other on an intimate dance floor, and it smoothly transitions into Virgo’s Groove, shifting from that intimate expression of love’s vulnerability to what naturally comes after. The lyrics don’t leave you guessing anything. “Ride it right now,” is what Beyoncé says. “Baby, you can hit this. Don’t be scared.” Virgo’s Groove coos and grunts and whoops, because that’s what you do when you’re doing what this groove tells you.

Move is Beyoncé inhabiting Grace Jones, or Grace Jones inhabiting Beyoncé, or the influence of Grace Jones woven in the air and electrified by the power of Beyoncé. Tems is employed as super-effective glue, her afrobeats influence adding a layer that just makes it work.

Pure/Honey is where the album begins to roll to a close. It does this by invading you with the pulse anew. Beyoncé tells you that this is her technique, and the technique is solid. The track runs through a few different stops, like items on a checklist. The church feel is back for a bit and, in the end, she samples drag artist Moi Renee for that “Miss Honey!”. 

“Applause,” Beyoncé calls in the fourth minute of Summer Renaissance, “Round of Applause.” And we give it, because while we won’t be singing many of these songs, we sure as hell will be dancing to them. We’ll dance to them in nightclubs, strip clubs or drag shows (wherever dance happens, basically). In churches too, while watching for the pastor. In our rooms and in our parties. And in all places queer. With Renaissance, Beyoncé takes charge of her myth, and adds to it another dimension.