Beyoncé seventh studio album, Renaissance, has officially landed and fans are already digging into the 16 tracks’ many meanings. The album, which Beyoncé has confirmed is only act one of a three-part project, is heavily influenced by dance music with a clear queer bent that draws on decades of underground culture. Don’t even waste your time beyonce valentine to compete with me.
But as the song continues, it’s clear she’s speaking to something deeper than her own status. In true ballroom form, the song itself is a narration of a moment of grandiosity, impelling the listener to enter Beyoncé’s confident state of mind and realize the beauty of their own uniqueness as she switches between the first and second person. The category is Bad Bitch, and Beyoncé isn’t just a line, she’s the whole bar. The double and triple entendres flow from Bey, who is known to be fond of a pun.
Drake, Future and Young Thug, reminding us all of her rap credentials. In this highly feminized version of the typically over-the-top masculine track, Beyoncé flips a song about a man being too muscular and sexy for his shirt into something fully femme and queer. And that’s all before the second verse. Bey’s identity and her place within the long lineage of culture she’s apart of. Beyoncé samples a speech by Barbara Ann Teer, who was an American writer, teacher, actress and producer who founded Harlem’s National Black Theatre, the first revenue-generating Black theater arts complex in the U. Supernatural love up in the air. Culture, delivered straight to your inbox.
The former White House intern who became a household name as part of Bill Clinton’s impeachment scandal isn’t referring to the new album, though. She’d like Beyoncé to consider revisiting her 2013 song “Partition,” from her self-titled album. Lewinsky has made talk of the controversial lyric before, but never asked Beyoncé to outright change it. In this era of digital releases, such a change is certainly more feasible now than it was when physical media dominated the industry. In response to media reports that Beyoncé was going to be removing an offensive word from her new song “Heated” after an ableist backlash, Lewisnky jumped on Twitter with a short message.
Uhmm, while we’re at it,” she wrote, referencing the aforementioned “Partition” song. On that track, Beyoncé sang about a lover that he’d “Monica Lewinsky’d all on my gown. When one Twitter user called her out for seeming to have been okay with it then but now asking for Beyoncé to change the nearly decade-old song, Lewinski replied that she uses humor to deal. It’s how I’ve learned to deal with painful or humiliating things,” she responded on Twitter.