Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ proves that we’re all living in Bey country: review

nypost.com:

So decreed Queen B in a rare lengthy Instagram post about “Cowboy Carter,” which is “Act II” in her “Renaissance” trilogy that began with the underground house beats of her 2022 album that had us buzzing and bopping to “Break My Soul,” “Cuff It” and “Alien Superstar.”And while it may seem like a hair-whipping flip to take it from the ballroom to the barnyard on her latest, it is not as radical of a departure as it may seem for Bey herself, who hails from Houston, Texas, and is as Southern as any hummingbird could be.“They used to say I spoke ‘too country’/And the rejection came, said I wasn’t ‘country ’nough’/Said I wouldn’t saddle up/But if that ain’t country, tell me, what is?” she sings with a snarl in her twang on “Ameriican Requiem,” the autobiographical manifesto that opens the album.This is Bey unplugged, raw and rootsy, two-stepping across the color lines that took “Texas Hold ’Em” — the banjo-picking bluegrass stomper that previewed “Cowboy Carter” last month — all the way to No.

1 on the pop chart, while making her the first black woman to top the country chart.And, yes — if you haven’t been keeping track — the majority of her record 32 Grammys are in the R&B categories.So basically, folks, Beyoncé is — as “Cowboy Carter” proves once again — a genre all unto herself.And, still flexing in her artistic peak at the unusually older age of 42, Beyoncé Knowles Carter is increasingly aware of her history, her legacy and, most importantly, her power as a black woman who is the biggest, baddest culture shifter in the game.So it feels only natural, only right that she should be the one to school us on one of her ancestors, Linda Martell, who became the first African-American woman to play the Grand Ole Opry in 1969.