Beyoncé Renaissance Review: A Disco-Trap Journey Where Past and Future Collide

On her seventh album, the singer displaces us from both history and the present and situates us in her unique ecosystem.

Beyonce, Renaissance
Photo: Genevieve Tate

Much like the propulsive, driving rhythms of her seventh studio album, Renaissance, Beyoncé’s solo output has unfolded as a delivery system for sumptuously crafted pop and R&B, rarely idling or stalling out in one mode for too long. The break between the singer’s last album, Lemonade, and her latest is the longest of her career, though that six-year interim yielded a collaboration with hubby Jay-Z, a soundtrack and accompanying visual album, and a live release. And where her work with Jay on Everything Is Love sometimes smacked of two middle-aged-ish artists incongruously trying on youthful trends, Renaissance feels both vitally current and elegantly classicist.

Toward the end of “Heated,” Beyoncé describes making “disco trap,” an apt descriptor for Renaissance’s genre of choice. The album cycles through and masters a range of dance floor-oriented styles, including the Afrobeats shuffle of “Heated,” the carefree disco-funk of “Cuff It,” and the 808-heavy gospel of “Church Girl.” Beyoncé even taps avant-electronic weirdo A. G. Cook to help produce “All Up in Your Mind,” whose groaning, massive bass and tangle of anxious synths may be the most confrontational sounds in the artist’s catalog.

Due in part to its tonal variety and expert sequencing, Renaissance never feels monotonous, despite its near-relentless forward motion. Beyoncé eases us in with the molasses-like dembow flex “I’m That Girl” and subsequently glides into the slinky, drumline-backed “Cozy,” which carefully dials up the tempo. A few songs later, the moment when “Energy” gives way to the piano-house slapper “Break My Soul” is one of the most ecstatic moments of album structure since Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor. Like that album, much of Renaissance suggests an exquisitely paced DJ set, with little breathing room between grooves.

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The more subdued or seemingly substantive moments on the album are still raucous dance numbers at heart. The loungey “Plastic Off the Sofa” moves with a kinetic energy, while the ostensibly political “America Has a Problem” is a bait-and-switch about sexual satisfaction powered by a hyperactive hi-hat. The latter track is one of Renaissance’s weaker moments, a rework of the cheeky 1990 Kilo Ali cautionary tale “Cocaine (America Has a Problem)” that simply doesn’t match Beyoncé’s finest moments as a rapper—already something like her fifth most significant skillset. And for proof, look no further than album standout “Thique.”

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Beyoncé has always owned and flaunted her desires, but she’s never been quite as explicit and graphic about bodies and sex as she is on “Thique”: “She say she on a diet, girl, you better not lose that ass, though.” On tracks like “Virgo’s Groove” and especially the carnally fired “Pure/Honey,” she teases and seduces the listener with grinning metaphors (“All ‘em boys want my honey from me”) before throwing more direct, libidinous statements at us (“Nasty is my guilty pleasure/Give this ass a squeeze”). These brash lyrical expressions of physical yearning have a lasting, charged effect when paired which the music’s highly visceral qualities.

Beyoncé’s nods to the titans of this realm of dance music aren’t exactly subtle, but they don’t need to be. She’s boisterously putting herself in conversation with figures like the inimitable Grace Jones, whom she ropes in for some guest vocals on “Move,” and Donna Summer, whose “I Feel Love” the singer joyously interpolates on album closer “Summer Renaissance.” Outfitting that disco classic with a gussied-up kick drum and her own humid trills, Beyoncé displaces us from both the past and the present and situates us in her unique ecosystem, where the beats seemingly go on forever as history and future collide.

Score: 
 Label: Columbia  Release Date: July 29, 2022  Buy: Amazon

Charles Lyons-Burt

Charles Lyons-Burt covers the government contracting industry by day and culture by night. His writing has also appeared in Spectrum Culture, In Review Online, and Battleship Pretension.

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