Renaissance, From the Latin Nasci, Meaning to Be Born.

I must admit, I’m not a loyal or well-versed attender to Beyonce’s music. I don't know every song; I don't even know every album. However, as a public and frequent listener to her songs that I like, I have been allowed to speak on her as if I were an expert. I was recently asked which of her albums is worth listening to in its entirety. Of course, I qualified my opinion by explaining my lack of knowledge and general distaste for idolatry and icons, my disdain at her billionaire status, and how my relationship with her music is “tenuous, at best.” Ultimately, I had an answer and offered that Renaissance is that album. That, due to its very nature, it must be.

Seamlessly transitioning between tracks, the club mix feel of each song drives you through all sixteen, urgently delivering a message of great importance: embracing your true self is beautiful. The significance of such a theme coming from a Black woman born and raised in the South is not lost on me, a white, queer, trans person from a small town in the Midwest. While our struggles are different, our oppressors are the same.

When Beyonce created this seventh studio album, her first in six years and the first in an installment of three created during isolation, she sought to offer the revival of a pre-pandemic era of liberatory dance in spaces generally meant for queer people. Specifically, Black queer people. The album seeps a profound love for the community that dominates her audience composition.

Renaissance dropped on July 29th, 2022, two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, when people hoped life would return to some semblance of “normal.” At a time when politicians were scrambling to recover from a near-fatal blow to their monopoly of power by quelling the remnants of the brutally effective uprisings resulting from George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis pig–ahem, police officer Derek Chauvin. And at a time when a certain Republican president made everything seem so much worse, despite it being business as usual.

The album was received with a collective sigh of refreshment, joy, and relief. I mentioned that the mononymous megastar has always been open about her support of the Black queer community, but this love letter seemed to come at a time when people felt they needed it most. The intentionality behind the playfulness, vigor, lyrics, and timing of the release indicates to audiences that she meant to stir things up and heal or perhaps distract the masses. The result was overwhelming. Queers everywhere rejoiced and reveled in her house heavy beats, voguing, hustlin’, bumpin’, and breaking wherever they felt safe, and even where they didn't.

That was the album's effect: raucous dance erupting at home and in public. Black joy, queer joy, and Black queer joy filling the streets. Grace Jones even collaborated with her on this project and she never collaborates. It was a gift to The People.

Undoubtedly, joy was a feeling O’Shae Sibley felt while voguing to the inspired ballroom beats. He was a professional dancer and choreographer living in Brooklyn, as well as an active member of the ballroom scene there. His friends say he regularly danced in public, and the night of July 29th, 2022, was no different.

While outside a Mobil gas station on Coney Island Avenue, O’Shae and his friends, who had been celebrating a birthday, began to vogue to Beyonce. Her latest album, Renaissance, had just dropped that day, and they couldn't be contained.

This Black queer joy proved too much for a group of young men observing from inside the store, so when they left, they confronted O’Shae and his friends, demanding they stop dancing while slinging racist and homophobic slurs. O’Shae confronted these men to protect his family and paid the ultimate price. He was stabbed to death in the parking lot of that Mobil.

O’Shae became a martyr. A person stolen for speaking their truth, killed for a heinous cause. Someone who inspires long after they are taken. A beacon to those of us left behind who might need help screwing our courage to the sticking place and standing up for our friends, family, or ourselves. He lived and died his values, and I might only dream to do so much.

This brings me back to the question at hand. Which Beyonce album should be listened to in its entirety? Earlier, I said the nature of Renaissance demanded it be the one. The driving beats, the connected tracks, and the narrative arc lend themselves to a joyful, thorough, and linear listen. But let me offer this, too. It is not just the nature; it is the very spirit of Renaissance and the precious spirits of those it is meant to celebrate, that demand: if you only listen to one wholly, this album be it.

Beyonce's song, 16 Carriages, from the album Cowboy Carter, and my first listening experience of it, inspired another piece I wrote.

The prevalence of hate speech, microaggressions, and outright physical violence against members of the LGBTQIA+ community is and has been a crisis. The comorbid element of racism creates a humanitarian failure of epidemic proportions. May our martyrs rest in power.