FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Beyoncé - RENAISSANCE
__________
THIS it feature is normally…
PHOTO CREDIT: Carlijn Jacobs
for great albums of the past five years that didn’t get all the credit they deserved first time around and need a new spin. I have used the last few or so for albums released this year that are either underrated or warrant another listen. The reason I am featuring Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE is because it is one of her best albums, but there might be some who have not heard it. Maybe feeling it was going to be like her other albums, RENAISSANCE is different to 2016’s Lemonade. Whereas that album seemed more personal and featured more R&B and Hip-Hop, RENAISSANCE has a lot of Disco, House and Dance. It seems like it is from a golden era, compared to the somewhat more modern and urgent Lemonade. RENAISSANCE is the first instalment of a trilogy project. Beyoncé conceived and recorded the album during the COVID-19 pandemic, seeking to inspire joy and escapism in listeners who had experienced isolation and to celebrate a club era in which marginalized people sought liberation through Dance music. One might think critics would react less warmly to an album not quite as striking and personal. One that sort of sounds similar to her earliest solo work. In fact, there have been huge reviews across the board! There were some a little mixed towards RENAISSANCE when it came out, whilst there was this enormous explosion of attention on social media.
As it was released in July, I wanted to come back to the album now and recommend it to those who might not have heard it. Proving herself to be one of the most inventive and consistent artists ever, Beyoncé is at her best on RENAISSANCE. I will come to a couple of reviews for RENAISSANCE soon. I could not find interviews with Beyoncé where she discussed the album and its origins. Instead, there is a great feature from The Ringer, where they highlight how Beyoncé has cemented her place in music history from Lemonade in 2016, to her Coachella headline slot in 2018, to her latest album with RENAISSANCE. They also highlight how Beyoncé’s lyrics and perspectives have shifted:
“Renaissance marks a new method of storytelling from Beyoncé: If Lemonade was an exercise in building a longform musical narrative, her latest record clips together individual scenes as part of a larger world-building project. The universe Beyoncé has created on Renaissance is one of joy, pleasure, hedonism, regained confidence, and assured power. Though she’s previously explored these themes, they feel recontextualized given the social and political climate in which she is releasing the record. This new mindset is perhaps most evident in her takes on feminism and power, which has shifted dramatically since the beginning of her discography. On the breakout single “Break My Soul,” Beyoncé sings joyously about quitting her job in order to focus on love and pleasure, while a Big Freedia sample encourages listeners to “release” their work and stress.
“They work me so damn hard, work by nine, then off past five,” Beyoncé laments. Her sentiment comes in direct opposition to her 2011 hit “Run the World (Girls),” wherein the artist celebrated the working woman: “I work my nine to five, better cut my check.” Other tracks, like opener “I’m That Girl” reify the artist’s colossal confidence and swagger while separating her from the opulence often associated with her stardom: “It’s not the diamonds, it’s not the pearls, I’m that girl.” On Renaissance, power is derived not from money, work, or status, but rather the “release” of all of these things that previously defined Beyoncé’s artistry and persona. The record finds the artist at her most free-spirited, which, in a sense, puts her at her most powerful in turn.
While the lyricism and themes of Renaissance find Beyoncé putting old ideas in a new light, its music and production illustrate her ability to step onto entirely new ground and experiment with genres that have yet to be heard in her expansive discography. Powerful Afrobeats are plentiful on Renaissance, making the tracks feel gloriously decadent and effortlessly danceable. The record’s fifth song, “Energy,” finds Beyoncé rapping over seductive, tropical instrumentation as Jamaican American reggae artist BEAM describes the sublime energy of the club. On “Move,” which features Nigerian musician and producer Tems, an infectiously danceable beat mirrors the song’s encouraging lyrics: “Move, move, move, skrrt off, make room / stampede coming through,” Beyoncé proclaims as the track accelerates, emulating the immediacy of a flood onto the dance floor. In a testament to Beyoncé’s range, those quick-paced Afrobeats live right next to several more ethereal, disco-inspired tracks on Renaissance; impossibly smooth transitions allow both sounds to not only coexist but coalesce on the album. “Cuff It” and “Virgo’s Groove” utilize an effective combination of psychedelic strings, light brass instrumentation, and a grounding, funky bass line to create a shiny, uptempo groove perfect for the dance floor. The album’s closing track, “Summer Renaissance,” solidifies Beyoncé’s ode to disco via references to Donna Summer’s classic 1977 hit, “I Feel Love.” She even dives into light EDM: “All Up In Your Mind,” coproduced by hyperpop artist A.G. Cook, has an undeniably electronic feel.
On Renaissance, Beyoncé pushes herself to journey into genres that feel surprising even for an artist of seemingly infinite range. One of the most surprising and lyrically impressive songs on the record is “Church Girl,” which finds the artist singing about “Church girls acting loose” and “bad girls acting snotty” over a staccato bounce beat built around a hymnal sample from the prominent gospel group The Clark Sisters. Beyoncé grew up in the church and sang in her church choir, experiences which translate beautifully onto this track: the song is at once a celebration of the gospel tradition and a subversion of the often rigid, misogynistic standards Black women are held to under Christianity. Her religious expertise comes through clearly in her subtly clever lyricism. “Nobody can judge me but me, I was born free,” the artist proclaims, a play on the common Christian saying that “only God can judge you.” An undeniably danceable anthem, the track goes beyond simply encouraging listeners to “drop it like a thotty” to advocate for bodily autonomy within the church and outside of it. In the Christian tradition, children often undergo Communion, a ritual where they eat a wafer that symbolizes the body of Christ. “Now you are the body of Christ,” reads Corinthians 12:27, “and each one of you is a part of it.” When Beyoncé declares that “soon as I get in this party, I’m gonna let go of this body,” it feels like a direct rejection of this Christian ideal, a proclamation that her body is hers to dance and move how she pleases. In a way, the track operates as a musical mirror to Beyoncé’s 2016 hit “Daddy Lessons,” a boisterous country jam wherein the artist’s Texan Christian father “swore it on the Bible” that she needs to protect herself from and even “shoot” dangerous men. “Church Girl” is a continuation of Beyoncé’s rejection of a patriarchal Christian tradition, and the track stands as a reminder that she can bring us to church on her own terms”.
I will finish with a couple of reviews. There was so much love out there for the joyous and phenomenal RENAISSANCE! This is what AllMusic noted in their review of an album that surely sits alongside the very best of this year. It is definitely one of my favourites:
“Break My Soul" offered much to dissect as the preliminary single off Renaissance, Beyoncé's first solo studio album since Lemonade and part one of a promised three-act project. Integrating a flashback to early-'90s crossover house hit "Show Me Love," the resilience anthem -- reinforced with an echoing gospel choir and sampled Big Freedia exhortations -- came across like a nostalgic dance remix preceding the original version. Instead, it slid neatly into place on the parent LP not only as an accurate representation but also as a foreshock to an hour-long housequake filled with irrepressible exuberance in celebration of self and sisterhood. Among those to whom Beyoncé dedicates Renaissance is her late gay cousin and godmother, Uncle Jonny, credited for introducing her "to a lot of the music and culture that serve as inspiration for this album." The multitude of dancefloor sounds cultivated and celebrated since the late '60s in underground clubs by liberation-seeking gay, Black, and Latino dancers has been a natural ingredient in Beyoncé's recordings since the birth of Destiny's Child (take the use of the Love Unlimited Orchestra's proto-disco exemplar "Strange Games & Things" in "No, No, No, Pt. 2"), but it is the basis of Renaissance.
The LP is top-to-bottom danceable and sequenced with each track setting up the next, through the ecstatic finale, where Beyoncé most potently mixes sensuality and aggression, claiming her man with nods to Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Patrick Cowley, and Larry Heard. "Cuff It" is a disco-funk burner with Nile Rodgers' inimitable rhythm guitar and a slick quote from Teena Marie's biggest ballad, though it has all the vigor of Lady T's uptempo classics. The more relaxed "Virgo's Groove" is designed for circling the rink with its delectably plump bassline and handclaps, and moves to a private room where Beyoncé commands, in one of the set's many memorable turns of phrase, "Motorboat, baby, spin around." Renaissance pulls from the more recent and present sonic developments with equal guile. Dancehall-derived dembow is stretched out for the strutting opener "I'm That Girl." "Heated" works a chugging Afrobeats rhythm, and is keenly trailed by the swollen dubstep pulsations of "Thique." The most exciting moments fearlessly blend and switch eras. "Pure/Honey" alternates between a duly vulgar ballroom brush-off and pop-funk rapture, and "Church Girl," a rousing gospel-bounce marvel, weaves the Clark Sisters with the decidedly less-reverent DJ Jimi and the Showboys. Beyoncé is vocally up to the challenge of juggling the almost-innumerable quantity of styles and references, sighing, purring, beaming, belting, and spitting fire with all the required conviction and attitude. Her congregation of fellow writers, producers, and vocalists is a formidable assembly of close collaborators (the-Dream, Tricky Stewart, Mike Dean, NOVA Wav), younger trailblazers (Honey Dijon, Kelman Duran, Tems), and legends (Grace Jones, Raphael Saadiq). Act II will presumably have at least one ballad. They're not missed here”.
I’ll finish with CLASH’s effusive recommendation of an album from a music legend. After a couple of decades or more in the industry, you cannot predict or write off Beyoncé! If you have not spun RENAISSANCE, then I would urge you to do so as soon as possible:
“On ‘I’m That Girl’, the opening track from her long-gestating seventh album ‘RENAISSANCE’ – the first act of a planned trilogy – Beyoncé offloads a series of hubristic declarations as an audibly frantic sample of Tommy Wright III’s and late Memphis rapper Princess Loko’s ‘Still Pimpin’, ripples like an engine underneath. A slow rapture of self-love unfurls as Beyoncé’s announces “all these songs sound good”. Is she wrong? No, she isn’t. All sixteen tracks warrant that admission.
‘RENAISSANCE’ arrived without the visual accompaniment we’ve come to expect from the auteur. The Houstonian opted instead for a more conventional rollout, letting the songs simmer in the imagination of her listeners. The effect is already palpable. The space-age glitchtronic odyssey ‘Alien Superstar’ – the album’s jewel in the crown – is already a viral hit on Twitter and TikTok; the soaring chorus scoring hyper-feminised animation and digital memes curated by creative fans.
Since ‘4’, Beyoncé has mainstreamed fringe sounds to the masses. Bypassing trends and hits, she’s oscillated between pop-skewed R&B aspirations and a synthesis of modernist sounds. On ‘RENAISSANCE’, she completely leans into her musical impulses with unmitigated passion and poignancy. Beyoncé has never sounded more uninhibited, more whimsical or “cosier” than she does on ‘RENAISSANCE’. From the hedonism of Studio 54 disco, to the highs of Hacienda clubland and Detroit techno, Beyoncé puts her proverbial stamp on a ravey revivalist trip through era-defining dance. Wild and gleefully self-possessed, ‘CLUB RENAISSANCE’ is an unceasing hour-long DJ mix that rewards stamina; a summon to commune on the dancefloor and unburden the mind and unshackle the body from the flames that threaten to engulf us all.
PHOTO CREDIT: Mason Poole
‘RENAISSANCE’ memorialises Beyoncé’s late Uncle Johnny, who lost his life to AIDS as her career began to flourish in the early 00s. Beyoncé credits her ‘godmother’ with exposing her younger self to the underground subculture of queens, femmes, ballroom splendour and its language of aspirational fantasy. The legacy of these lost souls looms large throughout: Beyoncé pays tribute to the Black trans and genderqueer innovators who birthed these fiefdoms on the dancefloor, prizing them back from gentrified hands. On the languorous sway of ‘Cozy’, Beyoncé zealously lists the colours of Daniel Quasar’s ‘Progress’ pride flag, a powerful nod to marginalised LGBTQ+ people of colour.
‘RENAISSANCE’ doesn’t just pay homage to the spiritual antecedents of the Black queer tradition through idioms, it embraces the culture of “serving” through collaboration that is so integral to its survival: ‘Cozy’ and the penultimate track ‘Pure/Honey’ features production by house music forerunner Honey Dijon, and queen-speech regality from drag archetypes Kevin Aviance and the late Moi Renee, who add veracity and “cunty” realness to Beyoncé’s brand of shit-talking flagrancy.
At times Beyoncé has been criticised for a maintaining a too clean and sterile approach to her work. On ‘RENAISSANCE’, she masters the art of controlled chaos. ‘Heated’ – the older, nastier sister of ‘Bow Down’ – is a guttural siren cry; the final minute loaded with the most outlandish pomp and posturing you’ve ever heard on a Beyoncé track. ‘Church Girl’ threads together the consecrated and profane, recalling the seismic vocal yelps of ‘Get Me Bodied’ backed by a chipmunk vocal loop of ‘Center Thy Will’ by the Clark Sisters, producers No I.D. and The-Dream creating a scratchy bounce base for Beyoncé to wax lyrical about sisterhood and the right to self-determination. She knows she has sauce; she wants you to tap into yours as well.
‘RENAISSANCE’ surveys the lusty and febrile Dionysiac dimensions of after-hours music. This is grown people music. Beyoncé offers the listener a brief respite from the churning soundscape midway through, lowering the tempo for the lush retro segue of ‘Plastic Off The Sofa’ and ‘Virgo’s Groove’. Beyoncé has always excelled in her vocal production work, but here her ornate harmonies are soothing and indelibly smooth, mirroring the ecstatic rise and fall of synchronised motion, of sex, of groovy basslines and eternal monogamous love.
Pain is no longer a prelude to transcendent art. ‘RENAISSANCE’ is instead a prolonged flex; a parade of joy, emotion, coked-up glam and excess. It’s delirious and dicey, denotative without being derivative. Yes, Beyoncé’s the “greatest living entertainer” but what about her foresight, her finely-tuned instincts or her vocal ingenuity. The word ‘genius’ isn’t bestowed upon Beyoncé the way it is for Kanye or Kendrick; if ‘RENAISSANCE’ doesn’t convince you of her merit or her unerring willingness to produce sprawling bodies of work that are editorially precise, prismatic and rhythmically audacious, nothing will.
9/10”.
One of 2022’s best albums, I have featured it in Revisiting… as some may not have heard the album. Even if you have, then it is one that needs to be played again and again! In future features, I will investigate a couple of albums from this year that may have been overlooked a bit. When it comes to RENAISSANCE, there was a lot of love out there for it. It will be fascinating to see where…
THE magnificent Beyoncé heads next.