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)
We Back! (On Thursday)
We Are Tired of Sexual Harassment (and Sequels) | Season Finale
We Get Biracial
We Take a Knee
We Assess the Outrage over "Bodega" and Mother!
We Bow Down to Rihanna and Venus
We Debate NPR’s Greatest Albums by Women
We Have a Chappelle Show
We Care For Ourselves and Others in Trump’s America
We Grieve Charlottesville
We Discuss: Who Owns Stories About Blackness?
We’re Freaking Out About O.J. and Girls Trip
We Pick Science Fiction for Mitch McConnell
We Get Bodied Talking Jay-Z and Beyoncé
We Seek “Authentic” BBQ
We Revive Tupac and Side-Eye Sofia Coppola
We Celebrate Gay Pride — The Highs and Lows
We Said, He Said, She Said
We Watch 'Wonder Woman' and Do a Taxonomy of the Summer Jam
We Love the Beach, We Hate the Beach
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