Renaissance: Love it, Hate It, Stuck On It?
October 31, 2022
I have a confession to make and please don’t snatch my Black card for this one.
I still haven’t taken the time to listen to Beyoncé’s new 7th solo album that recently dropped this past July. From trendy dances on TikTok to radio bangers, “Renaissance” has brought its richly packed buffet of sound to the forefront.
Don’t get me wrong I love me some Queen B from her Sasha Fierce era to “Drunk-in-Love” Bey on the beach. I had to know what others were saying about this album. Was I the only one who hadn’t fully immersed themselves in the release of 2022’s “we outside” anthem album?
Kareemah Muhammad, a second-year mass communication major from Los Angeles happened to be
bumping the album on our way to class. If it’s one song I can hear from a muffled set of air pods, it’s the bass and piano to “Break My Soul.”
“I absolutely love this album,” Muhammad said. “It’s fun, inspiring, motivational and it celebrates Black culture, which I love. It just gets better and better as I keep listening and it never gets old to me,” Muhammad said.
Truly spoken from a worker-bee herself who is a part of the “Beehive” and I refused to get stung. I couldn’t mention my lack of listening participation out of embarrassment so I did what anybody would do in this situation: smile and nod.
On my quest to get some critical takes on the album, who better than the music connoisseur himself, Roderick Elston, a marketing major from Chicago, Ill.
“When I first listened to the album, I was like Oh this is pop music for the girls I’m sure they’ll love it,” Elston said. “Compared to what I recently heard from Beyoncé it just feels like it doesn’t have a story to it, but maybe that’s what pop is about- it isn’t about the story it’s about the sound and what gets people going- not thinking about it too much, but vibing.”
Our faculty are not immune from the beehive sting either.
Over in the Mass Communication department I brought up the “Renaissance album” with Dr. Nia Mason. She said she “couldn’t figure out where Beyoncé was going with it.”
As she pointed out the “overwhelming difference in musical sounds” she labeled the album overall as “not consistent.”
“The songs that were released beforehand were radio-ready versus the unreleased music dropped later in the album that I just couldn’t get into and didn’t find appealing,” Mason said.
In the History department, they love a throwback.
“I love “Break My Soul.” “Cuff It.” It had to grow on me. The first time I heard it I didn’t vibe with it, but it’s played so much on the radio that I like it now,” said Dr. Sharlene Sinegal DeCuir, the head of department for History at Xavier.
“I love “Church Girl,” It has that familiar NOLA beat and the lyrics are great. ‘I’ve been up, I been down;
feel like I move mountains; got friends that cried fountains…Nobody can judge me but me, I was born free.’”
Sinegal DeCuir knows her some lyrics and feels it to her core: “I felt that in more ways than one. I’m a wife, mom, sister, daughter, friend, and professor – sometimes I just want to let it go and “drop it like a Thotty” lol.”
And I’m here for it.
Go ahead Dr. DeCuir and drop it hard, but drop our lowest grade too while you at it!
