“ ‘Uncle Johnny Made My Dress’: Beyoncé, Renaissance, and Capitalization of Black Queer Cultures”

When “Break My Soul,” the lead single from Beyoncé’s seventh studio album, Renaissance, was released during Pride Month, June 2022, it was quickly apparent that project would center Black queer cultures. A dance track built primarily on an interpolation of Black queer, gender non-conforming New Orleans artist Big Freedia’s bounce track, “Explode” (2014) and Robin S.’s house club hit, “Show Me Love” (1990), “Break My Soul” sonically invokes Black queer lineages and presents an anthem of resilience. Building on that track’s success, the full Renaissance album, the Renaissance World Tour of 2023, and the December 2023 release of Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé, all demonstrated the project’s indebtedness to Black queer cultures and artists.

In this paper, I build on previous scholarship on ways that Beyoncé incorporates Black queer cultural practices in her albums and her stage performances to interrogate the relationship between the star and Black queer representation through Renaissance. These influences are manifested in musical choices, lyrics, featured and sampled artists who appear on the album, choreography in stage performance, and in the symbiotic relationship she has with fans, particularly through social media. Beyoncé both celebrates and capitalizes on Black queer cultural practices and labor in ways that do not always benefit Black queer communities and artists. For example, Beyoncé’s inclusion of samples of queer artists, rather than in-studio or onstage collaborations, suggests a distancing from these very artists. Additionally, while the Renaissance film was released on World AIDS Day and features a segment on Beyoncé’s late Uncle Johnny, a queer man who died from AIDS-related illness, it fails to name and address the epidemic that has impacted the Black queer communities that have so deeply influenced Renaissance. While Renaissance is celebrated for its Black queer inclusion, we should remain attentive to the power asymmetries it also enables.