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The arrival of a new Beyoncé project is an international holiday, one that requires a day off just to begin studying the myriad of references, themes, ideas, and trends that exist within it. Consider it a civic duty. Her seventh studio album, Renaissance, is no different: It’s an expansive, disco-and-dance-drenched ode to the nightclubs of the ’70s and queer Ballroom culture of the ’80s.
It’s easy to get lost in the music entirely, especially with each track bleeding into the next like a classic club mix. Renaissance is made to be felt on the dance floor—the kind of place where you can move to its melodies and lose the lyrics entirely.
But to do that is to miss the opportunity to get ahead of the curve, to start heeding the word of the all-powerful Beyoncé before everyone else can. Renaissance is a celebration—of Blackness, of queerness, of womanhood, of sex and self—but it’s also a guidebook to what’s hot and what’s not, courtesy of the trendsetter supreme herself.