Uncle Johnny
In March of 2019, Beyoncé and her husband Jay Z were awarded the Vanguard Award from GLAAD aka the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. In celebrating her years of allyship to the LGBTQIA community, Beyoncé dedicated the award to her uncle Johnny, “the most fabulous gay man [she] ever met,” who helped raised her and her sister Solange. Cut to last Friday, when the album Renaissance dropped, and the internet went wild with excitement and fever for the project, which Queen Bey describes herself on the song HEATED as ‘trap disco’. Indeed, Uncle Johnny’s influence can be heard all over the sixteen song-packed tracklist.
On the same song, Johnny himself gets a shoutout in the outro, as Beyonce barks as if she is an emcee in the Ball scene. Stating ‘fan me off I'm hot, hot, hot / Like stolen Chanel, lock me up in jail’ she pays tribute to ‘Uncle Jonny made my dress / That cheap Spandex, she looks a mess’. The emcee attitude, the fans, the homemade costumes, the whole song radiates ballroom energy. That energy continues throughout the album – on ‘ALIEN SUPERSTAR’, Bey states ‘Category: bad bitch’, again referencing an emcee at a ball, while also sampling Right Said Fred’s ‘I’m Too Sexy’. But it is especially felt on penultimate track ‘PURE/HONEY’. The song samples ‘Cunty’ by Kevin Aviance, one of most successful songs from the New York nightclub scene, being a member of the House of Aviance, as well as drag legend Moi Renee’s Miss Honey. Beyonce combines these house-come-bitch tracks to make an ultimate celebration of the queer underground scene that Uncle Johnny may well have been a part of.
Samples
Beyonce is not unfamiliar to sampling in her latest projects. Take her interpolation of Big Freedia in the video for black-power anthem Formation or even further back, sampling Donna Summer on the song Naughty Girl. And on Renaissance, doubles if not triples down on her sampling, including from these two artists. Disco classic I Feel Love makes up the melody for closer 'SUMMER RENAISSANCE' while Big Freedia makes her mark on two consecutive songs. The closing passages of track number 5 ‘ENERGY’ features Freedia’s iconic calls of ‘let’s go’ and the head-whipping yaka-yakas. These are samples from Big Freedia’s 2014 bounce track “Explode”, and continues into the following track, Break My Soul, which was the album’s only lead single. Freedia’s presence as a queer bounce musician is limitless as she continues to collaborate with some of the biggest and some of the most exciting artists in the world. Just last week I highlighted her collaboration with Tank and the Bangas. And here, she continues her powerhouse jump to stardom, with BREAK MY SOUL set to be song of the summer. In fact, last week’s episode was called Six Songs for Summer but with this album, I think I should replace it with these Sixteen Songs for the Summer.
Disco-style transitions:
As I mentioned, Big Freedia appears in this effortless transition between two songs. And what makes this album experience feel truly special is the dedication to making Renaissance flow from song to song in true dance and disco style, as if the needle on the record does not shift from the record. The transitions are excellently done, and the album truly does feel like an ode to disco, trap and dance.
Collaborators and Lyrics:
Continuing her celebration of black queer excellence, production comes from various sources including underground trans DJ Honey Dijon, PC Music proprietor A. G. Cook and Disco icon Nile Rodgers. With all these collaborators and samples, Beyonce weaves a rich tapestry that celebrates queerness and blackness, with Beyonce and her powerful voice as the locus point. And with lyrics that celebrate self-acceptance and self-love, it is understandable why this album is called Renaissance. If rebirth is what you are after, then Beyonce equips with the tools to do so. Take the song ‘COZY’ which is literally about being comfortable in your own skin. Other than sampling trans icon T.S. Madison’s line ‘(Fluorescent bеige, bitch, I'm black)’, Beyonce also literally spells out a rainbow flag. In her depiction of a ‘rainbow gelato’, she cites ‘Green eyes envy me/Paint the world pussy pink/Blue like the soul I crowned/Purple drank and couture gowns/Blue, black, white, and brown/Paint the town red like cinnamon/Yellow diamonds’. If that tapestry metaphor was anything to go by, Beyonce weaves with threads of all colours.
In conclusion then, Renaissance provides tracks for pretty much all occasions. And I have a feeling playlists will be flooded with Beyonce tracks. We’ve got Pride anthems, songs of the summer, music for pres and club classics. If ever there was an album who’s target audience could be described as ‘Queers in the Club’, Renaissance certainly fulfils the brief.
