We were so blown away by Beyoncé’s performance at the Coachella music festival that we decided to scrap our previous plans and dedicate this week’s entire episode to it. We think her performance will go down in the annals of American pop music as one of the greatest live shows ever.
We close read some of our favorite moments, including her beautiful rendition of the black national anthem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” and how she turns the swag surf into a dance for royalty. And we talk about the ways Beyoncé continues to shape-shift and grow as an artist, reinterpreting her own musical catalogue and making it richer, more sonorous and more black. We think about the ways black American music has always been misappropriated, and the ingenious way Beyoncé is pushing against that history, making music so skillful it can’t ever be replicated.
Discussed This Week:
“Kendrick Lamar Wins Pulitzer in ‘Big Moment for Hip-Hop’” (Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times)
Cathy Park Hong
Lil Nas X? Not Sorry!
40 Acres and a Movie
No Country for Any Men
Now That's What I Call a Bridge!
The N-Word
The Return of Still Processing
Best of the Archives: Whitney Houston (2017)
Best of the Archives: Whiteness in America (2017)
Best of the Archives: Psychobros (2019)
Best of the Archives: Aretha Franklin (2018)
Sweet, Sweet Fantasies, Baby
'Waiter, There's a Fly in Our Bubble'
Ziwe May Destroy Hamilton
Reparations for Aunt Jemima!
So Y’all Finally Get It
New Loop, America
Does This Phone Make Me Look Human?
Fiona Ex Machina
Halle Berry? Hallelujah.
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