All things Renaissance
Beyoncé is hooked on the feeling of self-expression. In the liner notes posted on her website, she writes that Renaissance, her seventh solo album and “Act I” of a mysterious trilogy, is a “safe place, a place without judgment… a place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking.” In turn she pays homage to the true safe places for many of her fans, celebrating the clubs made by and for Black women and queer people, Black Chicagoans and Detroiters and New Yorkers who created house and techno, Black and Latinx ball and kiki houses. Inside Renaissance’s vast tent, there’s a safe place at the roller rink (“Virgo’s Groove”), at the disco (“Summer Renaissance”), at the subwoofer contest (“America Has a Problem”), at Freaknik (“Thique”), in church, at the NOLA hole-in-the-wall hosting the bounce party after church, at the ball in the Harlem community center, right underneath the basketball hoops. She’s under a strobe, flipping her hair, twirling that ass like she came up out the South, as she raps on the ebullient “Church Girl,” praying to god over a Clark Sisters sample and then squaring the propriety on a Trigger Man beat, bussing it with the godly state of being “born free.”
