I'm distinguishing "fun" from "pleasure" here, and also from the work (it, girl) of providing fun to others. "Have you ever had fun like this?" she sings with a softness that glows up the next line, the song's lyrical hook - "We gon' f*** up the night." Fun is what f**** up the night, what sets the established order on its head. We're not meant to watch the renaissance, we're meant to go out and create it.Īnn Powers: Thank you both for setting up the question that's been haunting me ever since Beyoncé began the Renaissance rollout with the imperiously ecstatic "Break My Soul" and an image of her astride a glass horse, embodying disco decadence: Can Beyoncé actually have fun? Is that what this project is all about? She highlights that word in "Cuff It," the joyful Chic tribute that's one of the album's most instantly memorable tracks. If Renaissance is the theme of the ball, Beyoncé is the house mother fussin' on the balcony, the queen on the floor serving face, the spectator snapping in time and omnipotent judge all at once.
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What you said about this being the first Beyoncé project in nearly a decade we could only listen to start is so poignant. In every refraction of light, a different genre is transformed and beamed down to the dance floor with the sole purpose of getting listeners out of their heads and into their bodies. Ambitious and experimental, disparate elements merge together with tracks starting in one era and ending in a different one.Īs Jason described, Renaissance, the first of what she has called a three-part project, turns disco's infinite potential into a showcase of the sonic Black diaspora. True to the clues, Beyoncé's sonorous new release is a power clash. In late 2020, I predicted that Beyoncé planned to pivot to disco for her long-awaited solo seventh studio album based solely on the fact that her IG updates featured more power clashing fits. Every glance offers a new perspective, a new world to disappear into. LaTesha Harris: With a multitude of mirrors for light to reflect off, a disco ball is a space of infinite possibilities. Whether the results successfully cohere and do what Beyoncé seems to hope they will do - inspire escapist fun and transcendence in these grim times - is something to ponder. Even in the absence of Beyoncé's customary immersive visuals, Renaissance is such a barreling head rush of creative musical, sonic and lyrical ideas that the work of deconstructing and making sense of it is inherent to the album's coded power. Samples and interpolations of the funk music past, paying homage to legends from James Brown to Teena Marie, abound in Beyoncé's expansive, quasi-chaotic musical Cuisinart. Songs start one way and then somehow morph into something else: "Pure/Honey" serves up 1990s underground New York voguing music (thanks to its sample of Kevin Aviance's "Cunty") before transforming into breezy Prince-esque '80s boogie. and The-Dream not to mention West African Afrobeats and South African gqom, trap and a whole lot more. It's Beyoncé, so naturally it's shrewdly calculated: There's Nile Rodgers' iconic chucking '70s disco guitar on "Cuff It " the pioneering Chicago house of Green Velvet on "Cozy" (along with house music DJ Honey Dijon, who also contributes to "Alien Superstar") the buckwild hip-hop banger "Church Girl" featuring a Twinkie Clark gospel sample served up by co-producers No I.D.
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Renaissance is a maximalist opus of 16 tracks that summon six decades of innovation across the sprawling multiverse of post-1970s Black dance music.
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Ĭan Queen Bey command the legions of listeners who follow her back to those sweaty, communal, utopian spaces that span decades of history and memory? NPR Music convened three critics - Ann Powers, Jason King and LaTesha Harris - to linger over the build and release of Renaissance and see how deep the dance floor ecstasy goes. Thick with references to dance music past and present and the Black artists who've built the genre, there's much to dig into on the overwhelming, energetic and well-studied Renaissance. There was a lead single, a properly announced release date and even a highly publicized leak, but the retro-leaning familiarity of Beyoncé's approach hasn't lessened the impact of an album that demands a deep decoding.
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Renaissance, Beyoncé's seventh full-length solo album, mines a liberating history of dance music, from Donna Summer-sampling disco to modern Chicago house.Ĭarlijn Jacobs/Via Parkwood EntertainmentĪfter nearly a decade of shifting the music industry with surprise drops and arresting visual albums, Beyoncé's seventh full-length album, Renaissance, emerged into the world on Friday in a way that almost felt traditional.