Culture

The Best Reactions To ‘Renaissance’, Beyoncé’s Disco-Infused House Album

"This Beyoncé album is fully for the the girls, the gays, and the dolls and y’all better respect ballroom culture."

by Reena Gupta  29 July 2022

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The long-awaited new Beyoncé album Renaissance landed this morning, and everyone is melting down accordingly.

The artist gave us a taste of what was to come when she dropped ‘Break My Soul’ last month: a house-inflected dance track that signalled that Bey was officially back; and after the rage and heartbreak of 2016’s Lemonade, and two years of a pandemic, she was ready to dance.

“With all the isolation and injustice over the past year, I think we are all ready to escape, travel, love and laugh again. I feel a renaissance emerging, and I want to be part of nurturing that escape in any way possible,” she told Harper’s Bazaar last year.

In that spirit, people are saying that Renaissance is the artist’s most playful album yet. “Fast-paced bounce melds with glossy Diana Ross-inspired disco, tinges of soul, sweltering Afrobeats and gqom; swirling trap, swaggering house, Jersey Club, New Jack Swing and even gritty, thumping maximalism on ‘All Up in Your Mind’ – often within the space of one song,” writes The Guardian‘s Tara Joshi.

The record may also be her most explicit: This is not the Beyonce that was in 2008, 2014 or even 2016, but a grown-up expression of jubilance.

Here are our favourite social media reactions to Renaissance so far.