RENAISSANCE by Beyoncé

Renaissance, Beyoncé's seventh studio album, dropped on July 29, 2022, through Parkwood and Columbia, billed as the first act of a trilogy. She made it during the COVID-19 pandemic as an escape hatch from all that isolation, and it plays like one long night out: the tracks run into each other like a DJ set, pulling from disco, house and funk and saluting the Black and queer club scenes that made the dance floor a refuge.

The producer list runs from The-Dream and No I.D. to A. G. Cook, Boi-1da and Raphael Saadiq, with Grace Jones, Tems and Beam stepping up to the mic. "Break My Soul" is the release-valve anthem that went to number one on the Hot 100, and "Cuff It" is a strutting disco-funk rush that became her longest-charting song there. Hedonism, swagger and self-invention are the whole point. It won Best Dance/Electronic Album at the Grammys, and Cowboy Carter carried the trilogy on in 2024.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.