Beyonce RENAISSANCE 180g 2LP

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RENAISSANCE is the highly anticipated new album from global icon Beyoncé. Packed with rousing anthems that resonate with everybody, RENAISSANCE is a culmination of freedom and escape that encourages unimaginable jubilation, agency, and movement with abandon. The singular intent of RENAISSANCE, a reinvention of four on the floor, is to showcase music that stirs you from the soul and encourages your dancing feet. It is a celebration of a club era when anyone who felt like an outsider sought each other and formed a community of freedom-seekers to express themselves creatively through the rhythm, which we still celebrate today.

'Break My Soul,' co-produced by The-Dream and Tricky Stewart, is a palimpsest, its evocations and sounds layered deep in the sense memories of club heads. There is the synth organ sound reminiscent of Robin S.' 'Show Me Love,' arguably the standard-bearer of '90s pop house, but also a lyrical callback to Black Box ('Everybody Everybody'), the spiritual frisson of Ultra Naté's 'Free,' and the sensual intent of Crystal Waters' '100% Pure Love.' Most of all, though, it positions Beyoncé as a diva entering her Whitney Greatest Hits era: Having conquered virtually every other genre, it's high time for body music.

...an hour-long housequake filled with irrepressible exuberance in celebration of self and sisterhood....The LP is top-to-bottom danceable and sequenced with each track setting up the next, through the ecstatic finale, where Beyoncé most potently mixes sensuality and aggression, claiming her man with nods to Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Patrick Cowley, and Larry Heard.... Beyoncé is vocally up to the challenge of juggling the almost-innumerable quantity of styles and references, sighing, purring, beaming, belting, and spitting fire with all the required conviction and attitude. Her congregation of fellow writers, producers, and vocalists is a formidable assembly of close collaborators (the-Dream, Tricky Stewart, Mike Dean, NOVA Wav), younger trailblazers (Honey Dijon, Kelman Duran, Tems), and legends (Grace Jones, Raphael Saadiq).

It's a revelation in dance pop, stuffed with contagiously bouncy beats accompanying Bey's velvet voice. The album's composition feels entirely new for Beyoncé, with seamless club transitions and synthetic electronic sounds throughout, and yet it suits her extremely well... The more you zoom in, the more you see that every detail has a purpose, but from afar, Renaissance is some of the most welcoming, purely enjoyable music that any artist released this year, and it's purposeful in that sense too.

Beyoncé follows the trend of experimenting far outside of her realm, lending her silky vocals and sexy whispers to jittery Memphis rap samples, dancehall drums and grandiose diva house beats. Renaissance doesn't take itself too seriously, allowing the goddess herself to have a bit of fun and create infectious dance music.