Since “Lemonade” (2016), her latest solo studio LP and accompanying film, Beyoncé has showered fans with a number of ambitious interim projects.
In 2018, she performed as one of the headliners at the Coachella festival, where her show paid tribute to the marching band tradition of historically black colleges and universities, and was widely hailed as a triumph – a show that “refocused her music and redefined the connections with pop and framing it squarely in a line of Southern Black musical traditions,” wrote DailyExpertNews critic Jon Caramanica. The performance was later turned into a Netflix special and an album, both titled “Homecoming.”
Also in 2018, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, her husband, released a joint album, “Everything Is Love,” credited to the Carters. And in June 2020, at the height of the national protests following the murder of George Floyd, she released a song, “Black Parade,” with lines like “Put your fist up in the air, show Black love.”
“Black Parade” won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance the following year, one of four awards that night that brought Beyoncé’s career to 28 — more than any other woman. This year, Beyoncé was nominated at the Academy Awards for Best Original Song for “Be Alive,” from the movie “King Richard,” a biopic about Venus’s father and Serena Williams.
How the early leak will affect “Renaissance” commercial prospects remains unclear. Years ago, the unauthorized release of music in advance could have devastating effects on an album. But that danger has been mitigated by the shift to streaming.
And Beyoncé, like most other artists today, took pre-orders for physical copies of her album, which will count on the charts as soon as they ship — usually the week of release. The four box sets of “Renaissance” and the limited edition vinyl version are sold out on Beyoncé’s website.