Beyoncé commands us to dance

Renaissance is a visceral, liberating record — drenched in disco’s sexual libido and sassy club kinesis.

Renaissance is a visceral, liberating record — drenched in disco’s sexual libido and sassy club kinesis.

Kelis has accused Beyoncé and The Neptunes of “theft” for allegedly failing to seek permission to sample her 1999 song ‘Get Along With You’.

The sample appears on ‘Energy,’ off Beyoncé’s latest album Renaissance. The album credits composers Pharrell Williams and Chad (Williams, the second half of Neptunes.) 

“My mind is blown too because of the level of disrespect and utter ignorance of all 3 parties involved is astounding,” Kelis commented on a post from @kelistrends, from the verified account for her company Bounty & Full.

“I heard about this the same way everyone else did. Nothing is ever as it seems, some of the people in this business have no soul or integrity and they have everyone fooled.”

In an additional comment, Kelis added, “it’s not a collab it’s theft.” 

Kelis is not formally credited as a producer, composer or lyricist on 'Get Along With You'. Per Tidal, the song’s producers are Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo, Rob Walker, and the Neptunes — with Williams and Hugo credited as composers and lyricists.

The singer previously called out The Neptunes in an interview with The Guardian in 2020, where she detailed that she was “blatantly lied to and tricked” into signing contracts based on “what I was told.”

She claims that she does not see any money from her first two records: Kaleidoscope and Wanderland. “I signed what I was told, and I was too young and too stupid to double-check it.'”

With that nasty business out of the way, let us enjoy the divine Renaissance.

On her seventh album, Beyoncé is having more fun than ever — she sounds positively breezy. The wounds of betrayal we heard on Lemonade have healed, and now, it seems, her prerogative is total dance floor dominion. 

Renaissance is a visceral, liberating record — drenched in disco’s sexual libido and sassy club kinesis. Bey, alongside her team of star-studded collaborators, have delivered a loving, dedicated canvas of dance music through the decades. 

She came out swinging with lead single ‘Break My Soul’, a bombastic diva house cut (which samples Robin S.’s ‘Show Me Love’.)’ COZY’, a collaboration with Honey Dijon and Green Velvet, is an ode to Chicago’s pivotal 1980s house scene. ‘Cuff It’ (which features contributions from Chic’s Nile Rogers) dabbles in disco, where ‘Thique’ has a techno flavour. 

The song SUMMER RENAISSANCE is Beyoncé’s most salient embrace of queer culture. A dedication to her late Uncle Johnny who she once described as “the most fabulous gay man” she’d ever met. Johnny was “The first person to expose me to a lot of the music and the culture that serve as inspiration for this album.”

That love is felt in the ballroom cuts, ‘Alien Superstar’ and ‘Pure Honey’, with chants “Category: bad bitch, I’m the bar.”

Bey once again turns to the gospel of eternal disco queen Donna Summer (she previously interpolated ‘Love to Love You Baby’ on Dangerously In Love track ‘Naughty Girl’), purring the chorus of ‘I Feel Love’ on 'SUMMER RENAISSANCE.' There’s also a welcome collaboration with THE Grace Jones on the daring and dexterous ‘Move’. 

Renaissance is ‘ACT I’ of an upcoming trilogy, which the liner notes confirm will be followed up with two more “acts.” Whilst we wait for those to arrive, let us bask in Renaissance, and all the other decadent dance music of years past.