In 2018, she appeared as one of the headliners at the Coachella festival, where her show paid homage to the historically black college and university band tradition, and was widely hailed as a triumph—a triumph that “reorients her music, setting aside her connections to pop and frame it squarely within a range of southern black musical traditions,” as New York Times critic Jon Caramanica wrote. The show was later turned into a Netflix special and album, 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 national protests following the killing of George Floyd, he released a song, “Black Parade,” with lyrics like “Put your fist in the air, show some Black love.” “Black Parade” won the Grammy Award the following year for Best R&B Performance, one of four awards that night that brought Beyoncé’s career total 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 the father of Venus and Serena Williams. How the early leak will affect the commercial prospects of “Renaissance” remains unclear. Years ago, unauthorized release of music in advance could have disastrous consequences for an album. But that risk 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 would figure in the charts as soon as it shipped — usually the week of release. On Beyoncé’s website, the four sets of “Renaissance” and its limited vinyl edition are sold out.
