I'm That Girl

Summary

Cannonball with Wesley Morris — “I'm That Girl” (Nov 22, 2022)

Episode Overview

In this episode of “Cannonball” from The New York Times, hosts Wesley Morris and Jay Caspian Kang engage in a lively, reflective conversation about Beyoncé’s 2022 album Renaissance. Through pop culture analysis, personal anecdotes, and plenty of laughter, they explore the album as a work of self-reclamation, queerness, humor, and Black joy. The episode delves into themes of liberation, the intersection of Blackness and queerness, the meaning of “trash” and “camp” in art, and Beyoncé’s evolution as an artist—particularly as she embraces her body and maturity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Renaissance as a Prescription for Liberation

• The show opens with a humorous riff on Renaissance as if it were a prescribed medication, lampooning the style of pharmaceutical ads and imagining “side effects” like “a heightened sense of liberation” and “glowing urine.”
  • [00:28] Jay Caspian Kang: “Wesley what would it be like if Renaissance was a prescribed medication that had its own commercial?”
  • [00:45] Jay Caspian Kang: “A replenished and rejuvenated sense of aliveness, a delight in humanity…”

2. Beyoncé’s Journey: Self-Reclamation through Music

• Beyoncé engages with public and personal issues through her music, starting from self-titled explorations to Lemonade and Homecoming, culminating in the playfulness of Renaissance.
  • [01:09] Jay Caspian Kang: “For a long time...she wanted to just celebrate black life and just everyday black life quotidian, the way like a painter or photographer might…”
  • Jay highlights Beyoncé’s personal joy seen through her playful public moments, like her family Halloween costumes.
    • [02:41] Jay Caspian Kang: “She was both Trudy Proud, the matriarch of the family, and Sugar Mama, the grandmother…watch her be at this moment in her life is a revelation…”

3. Humor, Camp, and the Unexpected in Renaissance

• Wesley and Jay express surprise and delight at how funny, audacious, and campy the album is.

  • [03:35] Wesley Morris: “The thing that's surprising to me about that photo is...what is surprising about this album, which is that it's funny as hell. I've never laughed more at a person who I didn't think had a sense of humor.”

• They discuss the privilege and risk of humor for Black women in public.

  • [03:52] Jay Caspian Kang: “...for a particular type of celebrity, it can be really rough and raw out there for women, and particularly black women. So funny is a privilege…”

4. Black, Queer, and Ballroom Aesthetics

• The album is described as an embrace of Black queer and ballroom culture, with tracks that directly invoke the spirit of drag balls and queerness.

  • [04:29] Beyoncé (lyrics): “It should cost a billion to look that cool.”
  • [07:13] Wesley Morris: “So this way of expressing herself does remind me of the drag balls from the 80s and 90s…giving herself her own house, so to speak.”

• The presence of queer collaborators and references moves the discussion from cis gay men to a more expansive view of gender and queerness.

  • [09:12] Jay Caspian Kang: “There's a lot of space for true gender expansiveness and queerness on this album…Beyoncé said, no, I want all of my people to come along...T.S. Madison, Honey Dijon…”

5. Camp, Trash, and “Tramp”: Reframing Cultural Excess

• They debate the meanings of “camp” and “trash,” questioning if Renaissance falls into either or something new—a kind of Black cultural upcycling.

  • [09:37] Wesley Morris: “I have very complicated feelings...about what camp is, and when we call something camp. But camp in many ways...is an accident. You don't have any control over it…”
  • [11:23] Jay Caspian Kang: “I wonder if we need another word for Black trash than trash, because this is so part of...a spectrum of satire, camp, and trash…”

• They coin “Tramp” as a term that captures the fusion of camp and trash in Beyoncé’s album.

  • [17:15] Wesley Morris: “This is straight tramp.”
  • [17:16] Jay Caspian Kang: “Tramp. It is tramp.”

6. The Body, Queerness, and Embodiment

• Jay shares a personal journey about body image and her evolving relationship with Beyoncé, grounded in growing self-acceptance and seeing that reflected in Beyoncé’s openness.

  • [22:28] Jay Caspian Kang: “...when she was reaching her first crescendo, I was at a moment of my own body journey...I felt like everything about my body was wrong sized…”

• The discussion around “Church Girl” frames the club as both a spiritual and liberatory space, resembling the duality of church and nightlife for queer Black folks.

  • [23:36] Jay Caspian Kang: “...the way the club is analogous to the church for some of us, different forms of release and...connecting with something greater than yourself.”

7. Liberation and Queerness as Divine

• Concluding, Jay and Wesley read “Church Girl” as a hymn to liberation, connecting Blackness and queerness with divinity and freedom.
  • [25:45] Jay Caspian Kang: “...she starts singing Born Free, and it's so fluttery and it's so bird like...”
  • [26:30] Jay Caspian Kang: “...in an album that's entirely about queerness, we were made this way. And being queer is divine...To have someone be saying blackness is inherently queer...So I'm not knocking on any doors trying to get in...queerness is just inherently godly, whatever that word means to you.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Beyoncé’s audacity:
  • “It should cost a billion to look that cool.” – Beyoncé, “Pure Honey” [04:29]
• On aligning with Black queer world-making:
  • “They're not even for me. They're just me. It’s how I want to feel.” – Wesley Morris [05:09]
• On what radical openness means today:
  • “The strongest thing that we can do right now...is to be open to falling in love, and that is fucking things up.” – Jay Caspian Kang [06:40]
• On the risk and power of humor:
  • “Funny is a privilege, and funny's a luxury. And funny is not always going to be received in the way that you’ve intended it.” – Jay Caspian Kang [03:52]
• On “trash” as celebration:
  • “Trash, to me, is about America. It's about showing the aspects of us that we'd rather not see that are true and vibrant and real about us…And I just want to be extra clear about this. Trash is a wonderful thing.” – Wesley Morris [12:52]
• On “tramp”:
  • “Beyoncé. Neither trash nor camp or baby. Both trash and camp.” – Wesley Morris [17:20]
• On body acceptance and transformation:
  • “One is I started to go on my own journey of self acceptance and my own journey of self love. And maybe Beyoncé did too, because the way she was showing up in her body started to feel different.” – Jay Caspian Kang [22:51]
• On “Church Girl” and queerness as divine:
  • “Perhaps what Beyoncé is saying is in an album that's entirely about queerness, we were made this way. And being queer is divine. It is.” – Jay Caspian Kang [26:30]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | Notes | |-----------|----------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:28 | “Renaissance as a prescription” | Playful intro, medication ad parody | | 01:09 | Beyoncé’s evolution | Jay traces her journey across albums | | 03:35 | Humor in Renaissance | Revelations about Beyoncé’s newfound public humor | | 04:29 | “Pure Honey” and gay nightclub culture | Wesley links album to ballroom and queer Black experience | | 07:13 | Drag balls & Beyoncé’s “house” | Referencing 80s/90s drag and House culture | | 09:12 | Queer collaborators and representation | Inclusive lineup on the album | | 11:23 | Camp/trash debate | Defining camp and the Black tradition of “upcycling” excess | | 17:15 | Coining "Tramp" | Merging camp and trash as "straight tramp" | | 22:28 | Body image and Beyoncé | Jay’s journey to body acceptance mirrored in Beyoncé | | 23:36 | Church, club, and “Church Girl” | Nightlife as spiritual; “Born Free” section | | 26:30 | Liberation and queerness as divine | Reading “Church Girl” as a queer gospel |

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Summary Table: Main Themes

| Theme | Description | |----------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------| | Liberation | Both personal and communal, through music and identity | | Black & Queer Joy | Celebrated through aesthetics and musical references | | Body Acceptance | Jay’s personal reflections mirrored in Beyoncé’s work | | Camp, Trash, Tramp | Debating art forms of excess, spectacle, and resistance | | Humor | Beyoncé’s shift towards playfulness and risk-taking | | Spirituality & Release | Club and church as sites for transcendence |

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Conclusion

This episode expertly intertwines cultural critique, personal testimony, and musical analysis, using Renaissance as a prism for discussing Blackness, queerness, humor, self-acceptance, and artistic freedom. By openly questioning the boundaries of camp, trash, and the need for new language (“Tramp”), Wesley Morris and Jay Caspian Kang invite listeners to revel in Beyoncé’s unapologetic embrace of liberation, joy, and embodied truth. This isn’t just another album review—it’s an affirmation of the pleasure and power found in being “that girl,” on one’s own terms.

Transcript

[Podcast Host (Announcer)]

This podcast is supported by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Cathy Jones, Schwab's chief fixed income strategist, along with their guests, analyze economic developments and bring context to conversations around stocks, fixed income, the economy, and more. Download the latest episode and [e-mail] oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Wesley what would it be like if Renaissance was a prescribed medication that had its own commercial? You know how SNL always does those parodies of health commercials?

[Wesley Morris]

Side effects may include swollen toes, an.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Aching back, a heightened sense of liberation.

[Wesley Morris]

10 sick days in a row, a.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Replenished and rejuvenated sense of aliveness, a delight in humanity, the sense that you.

[Wesley Morris]

Are constantly roller skating through life, a.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Desire to participate in an orgy. You may also experience a sore throat from shouting the lyrics at the top of your lungs if you have managed to learn them yet.

[Wesley Morris]

Glowing urine.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Sorry, what?

[Wesley Morris]

Just neon urine. That's how I say it.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Okay.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm Wesley Morris.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

And I'm Jay Wertham.

[Wesley Morris]

We're two culture writers at the New.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

York Times and this is still processing. Beyonce does all of her talking through her music and you get a sense of where she's at in her life based on how the music sounds. For a long time to me it felt like she wanted to just celebrate black life and just everyday black life quotidian the way like a painter or photographer might and we could all just revel in this glamour and beauty through a very luxurious Beyonce lens. We've been on a journey of what seemed to be self reclamation with a self titled album and then we worked through her marital problems on Lemonade and we, we go through homecoming. I mean to take something as everyday as a marching band and do that for hours on a stage. Then we get Renaissance which is honestly just a slippery bubble bath. Soapy playtime.

[Wesley Morris]

Well it just landed in a big old pile of Grammy nominations, so there's that.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Well now I'm also starting to recognize that Renaissance is an arrival of Beyonce back to herself. She doesn't really care what anybody else.

[Wesley Morris]

Thinks about her BAE Liberation.

[Beyoncé (quoted lyrics)]

I'm crazy, I'm swearing, I'm daring your man staring. I just entered the country with derringers cuz them Karens just turned into terrorists.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

I mean this is a woman who is ready to have a good and anyone who follows her on Instagram knows this to be true because for Halloween she made her entire family Dress up like the Proud family. And Beyonce was two characters. She was two characters. Wait, she was both Trudy Proud, the matriarch of the family, and Sugar Mama, the grandmother, and. Which I had to zoom in to confirm that, yep, both were her. And this is someone who has only ever used media strategically to assert herself at the top of a pyramid and a hierarchy. And to watch her be at this moment in her life is a revelation, and it is as joyful to receive it as it must have been for her to make it.

[Wesley Morris]

The thing that's surprising to me about that photo is. Is also what is surprising about this album, which is that it's funny as hell. I've never laughed more at a person who I didn't think had a sense of humor.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

We've never been able to see it. I mean, for a particular type of celebrity, it can be really rough and raw out there for women, and particularly black women. So funny is a privilege, and. And funny's a luxury. And funny is not always going to be received in the way that you've intended it.

[Wesley Morris]

We're talking about this album. When did it come out? August.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Who even knows? Who even knows at this point? It could have. It could have come out five years ago or yesterday for all the, you know, I don't know the omnipotence that it has.

[Wesley Morris]

I laughed so much listening to this album. I mean, part of it was the sheer audacity of it.

[Beyoncé (quoted lyrics)]

It should cost a billion to look that cool.

[Wesley Morris]

Pure Honey, which is the gayest of the house song on this record.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

My favorite song, like, right before you.

[Wesley Morris]

Get to the chorus, she says, four, three. I'm too busy, check my technique. And then that sort of jungly house situation comes in. And what I love about that is this appropriation or. Or identification with black male gayness. I just feel like these songs are. They're not even for me. They're just me. It's how I want to feel. It's how I feel like I feel a lot of the time, but I don't have the capacity, the talent, the imagination to put it this way, but I used to go to nightclubs all the time, and there would be dudes in there who wore this, and I'm like, I want to be that guy, but I can't be. So I'm just gonna sit here and lean against this wall and watch this happen all over this dance floor. I also just feel like there's a song on this album called Cozy, this a Reminder. And my favorite thing about this song is that about 15 seconds in, she's like, fuck, yeah. Fuck yeah. I think that this alignment with a kind of gay ferocity, flamboyance, confidence, and just her own versions of those same qualities, the tension between those two things is the source of a lot of the pleasure on this album and the comedy of it. Right? The way that Alien superstar goes into. Into Cuff it. It starts off, you know, I feel like falling in love.

[Beyoncé (quoted lyrics)]

I feel like falling in love.

[Wesley Morris]

Okay, we have been here before with Beyonce. This is nothing new, because she feels she's always feeling like falling in love. And then she says, I'm in the mood to fuck something up.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

That's right.

[Beyoncé (quoted lyrics)]

I'm in the mood to fuck something up.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

I'm in the mood to fuck up.

[Wesley Morris]

And I'm like, wait, what?

[Jay Caspian Kang]

I want to fuck something up. I mean, being in love and being open to falling in love is the equivalent of fucking something up. Because everything about the world right now is telling us to harden, to calcify, to not trust, to withdraw, to isolate to. And the strongest thing that we can do right now, to live in hope and to not live in fear, is to be open to falling in love, and that is fucking things up.

[Beyoncé (quoted lyrics)]

Don't even waste your time trying to compete with me. No one else in this world can think like me.

[Wesley Morris]

So this way of expressing herself does remind me of the drag balls from the 80s and 90s. And here she is insinuating herself into it, giving herself her own. Her own house, so to speak. I don't know. Is it the house of Beyonce? Is it the house of Sasha Fierce?

[Jay Caspian Kang]

I mean, yes. And so now she's seeing herself as the mother of. Yeah, a house.

[Wesley Morris]

A house mother.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Yeah, a house mother. Category.

[Beyoncé (quoted lyrics)]

Sexy bitch. I'm the bar alien superstar.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Throughout the course of her career, Beyonce has historically styled herself as a type of mother. In 2017, when she was pregnant with the twins, there were these incredible images of her as the Virgin mother. I mean, she was really showing up in a lot of public spaces with that. Those signias and those signifiers on her as the Virgin mother Mary.

[Wesley Morris]

She is doing a version of what black men have been doing in my life for a long time, which is taking these ideas of womanhood and femininity and glamour and making them work for them, you know. You know, of. Of luxury and richness. One of the beautiful things about the drag balls was these. These were poor black people who didn't have anything like what they were seeing on TV when they watched Dynasty. And what would it need for a cisgender heterosexual woman to reestablish herself alongside these people with the sound of this house music. Like, what would it look like for Beyonce to have introduced Vogue to America and not Madonna?

[Jay Caspian Kang]

I mean, there's a lot of space for true gender expansiveness and queerness on this album. It's not just gay men, which would have been a very easy thing to do, and it would have been incredible. But Beyonce said, no, I want all of my people to come along, and she's got moi. Renee on Pure honey, you know, T.S. madison, legendary Chicago producer Honey Dijon.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes. But I think there's a way in which there is something campy about Beyonce on this album. I have very complicated feelings, Jay, about what camp is, and when we call something camp. But camp in many ways, to me, is an accident. You don't have any control over it. It's sort of beyond your control, either of a person or a work of art, that their extra ness is something they can't even help or their off ness is something that can't be helped. I think in camp, you're going for something and you miss it, or you're going for it and you end up someplace you didn't even think you were capable of arriving at.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

I think also, I think it's a way for her to understand herself in relationship to the queerness in her family. And she calls out her Uncle Johnny, who shapes her, shapes her understanding of black culture and black music.

[Wesley Morris]

The baddest part of the end to heated.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Uncle Johnny made me this dress. These cheap spandex. It looks a mess. Uncle Johnny made my dress. That cheap spandex. She looks like it's funny because, you know, it's not her dinging the dress that he made her. It's perhaps looking back and being like, I love this dress, but it was a mess. And how dare you, Uncle Johnny. And maybe he said it, and maybe it's a way that they talked about this dress. Yeah. It's a willingness to be at the center of a joke that you get to participate in as well. And Beyonce doesn't often do that.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, Jay, it's interesting that you say that, because I actually do think this is a great work of trash, which is like an uninhibited conflation of, like, sexual freedom kind of lewdness.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

I wonder if we need another word for black trash than trash, because this is so part of. I mean, it's not satire, but it lives along the spectrum of satire, camp, and trash, because this is something we've kind of always Done. It's like we're gonna take the bare minimum and make the most glitterly, like, spectacle out of it. It's very much just like collard greens and pot liquor. It's a type of upcycling that has a lot more humor in it and a lot more candor in it and a lot more. I'm thinking about the entrances that contestants make on RuPaul's Drag Race.

[Wesley Morris]

Tamisha Iman, that old bat.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

I'm thinking about the way you enter into a room and. And you want that up and down appraisal and whether or not you've made an outfit out of sandwich baggies, gift bags. As one challenge. Once asked someone to do or couture. Laughing together and maybe skewering the culture, but finding another type of culture within it. Right. Green means money.

[Wesley Morris]

I have on my feathers because we have to have a peacock. That means you're rich. She's one old, classic sassy lady.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

I think, for me, the thing about trash and Renaissance is the punchline is never us in Renaissance.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, absolutely. Yes. No, no, no.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

So how does trash work, then, in Renaissance, in your mind?

[Wesley Morris]

Trash, to me, is about America. It's about showing the aspects of us that we'd rather not see that are true and vibrant and real about us. And sometimes that manages to enter places that involve racism and sexism and misogyny. But a lot of the times, it's just the celebration of the body. And I just want to be extra clear about this. Trash is a wonderful thing.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

I'm hearing that.

[Wesley Morris]

And with respect to Renaissance, I think the, like, exact graphicness of its sexuality, it's not just merely its queerness, it's the specificity of it. Like, the way on a song like Move, there's just this. I don't care. I'm gonna do what I want. You're gonna bow down and listen to me.

[Beyoncé (quoted lyrics)]

Yeah, you gotta move.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Anything you do will be held against you.

[Wesley Morris]

It isn't about going high. This album is. This album is existing in the gutter.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Yeah, but maybe we should call it Glimmer. I don't know. Like, I want a different word. I want a different word because there's just so much glamour in it, but.

[Wesley Morris]

There'S a possibility for risk and offness in some way. Think something like cozy. Right?

[Beyoncé (quoted lyrics)]

I'm dark brown, Dark skin, light skin beige, fluorescent beige I'm black Bend down, bend up Bend broke, broke down Bounce back.

[Wesley Morris]

The way that this very glamorous person is aligning with this other person who's just like, let me tell you how it really is. I'm black to come in and do all this barking ferocity that, you know, Beyonce can't do.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

I agree with all of that. I'm still getting so hung up on the word. On the word trash because of its primary association in American pop culture. I mean, to your point about Beyonce allowing some of the Gremlin to come out, and Some of the Gremlin is.

[Wesley Morris]

A great work of trash.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

It's Gremlin and the true sense of the film Gremlins about, I think, blackness in America as a demonic monstrosity. And so a very cute, cuddly thing. And what happens when it gets wet? What happens when it eats after midnight? Essentially, what happens when it allows itself to be unruly. How Beyonce works in this album is to let some of that gremlin ness come out through the growls that she does when she's saying move, when she's saying no. For her, it's coming through in a tone. It's coming through in a texture. There are all these little creaks and cracks where that underbelly comes through. But Beyonce's so controlled that she's never gonna let herself, and she's too protective of us to let us be construed as grotesque. And it's not an album that has gone on tour yet, so it does afford this kind of privacy. And you can put it on and allow yourself to get wet. I mean, it is the thing you're putting on after midnight, or in allowing yourself to get wet around and let the gremlin come out. So I'm with you. I'm here for your definition of trash, and I'm coming around to it, and I believe you. So thank you for getting me there. I'm also just trying to bring in the way in which. The ways in which Beyonce's hyper, hyper, hyper conscious and hyper, hyper, hyper vigilant about how her music and what she's saying in her music gets used. You know, she's someone who's been very rigid historically about the images of her that are in the media. If images have made it into the media where she doesn't look good, she's asked to have them taken down. I mean, she's someone who has controlled every aspect of her personal life and her public life as much as anybody can. And in this album, to feel her just release that.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

And have a lot of fun with it.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah. Yeah. Would you be more comfortable if we called this camp instead?

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Yes, but we need another word too. Right. The language isn't camp is not expansive enough for what we're talking about. It's somewhere between those two things, between trash and camp. Tramp.

[Wesley Morris]

This is straight tramp.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Tramp. It is tramp. It's tramp.

[Wesley Morris]

Beyonce. Neither trash nor camp or baby. Both trash and camp.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Yeah, tramp.

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[Wesley Morris]

It's your headline to unpack.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

It's your one story to follow week by week.

[Wesley Morris]

It's your wordle to work through.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

It's your team to track.

[Wesley Morris]

It's your 36 hours to explore.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

It's your marinade to master.

[Wesley Morris]

It's your opinion to figure out.

[Podcast Host (Announcer)]

It's your mattress to upgrade.

[Wesley Morris]

It's your day to know what else you need to know today.

[Beyoncé (quoted lyrics)]

The New York Times. It's your world to understand. Find out [e-mail] yourworld.

[Wesley Morris]

Beyonce turned 40 maybe last year.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Yeah. Yeah, she did.

[Wesley Morris]

And I was thinking about what other great artists did when they turned 40. Bob Dylan turns 40, finds Jesus, makes three great albums about his new Christian self. Aretha turns 40 and, like, discovers the 80s and, like, fun, like the album she records when she's 40 has jumped to it, huh? Just, like jumped into the 80s. Double Dutch style.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Great.

[Wesley Morris]

And what I'm hearing on Renaissance is not caring in a way. I mean, not caring about what people think about you, not caring about having to speak for a bunch of people. Not caring about the expectations. But also, she is, as we've been talking, never been funnier. And what that sounds like to me is a song called America has a Problem.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

America. America has a problem. It's worth mentioning that in the weeks before Renaissance came out, track lists were released.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

And people were like, beyonce's finally going to talk about George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and she's going to, you know, say something about police brutality. Like she hasn't already said many things about police brutality through her music and imagery and songs. But okay, so when the song comes out.

[Beyoncé (quoted lyrics)]

I know you see this red rat Racks on me now, come and get.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Rather than talking about violence in this country, Beyonce's like, this booty gonna do what it won't to. I mean, there were many tweets that were like, we thought this song was going to be about George Floyd. Instead, it says, this booty's gonna do what it won't to. And in my mind, a song that's about the booty doing whatever it wants to do is a song in resistance to police brutality. Because the whole point is we don't get to. To do what we want to do.

[Wesley Morris]

But I. I do think that there's something about the positioning of herself and her body on this album that's really striking and fascinating. The number of times she talks about being in her body, out of her body.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

I mean, there's a viscerality to the way she's using her voice on this album that is extremely embodying. I mean, only Beyonce can turn a growl into a physical form that. Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. You know, a lot of people don't know this about me. I was not always a Beyonce admirer or appreciator. It took me a long time to get onto the Beyonce train, and I think it's because when she was reaching her first crescendo, I was at a moment of my own body journey where I really felt a lot of pressure and oppression and suffocation by images in popular culture of what ideal body types were gonna look like. I felt like everything about my body was wrong sized. And to be accepted and acceptable, to be desirable and lovable, I needed to look like these images in Word up magazine, which I bought every week or what was on mtv.

[Wesley Morris]

Word up magazine.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Word Up, Yeah. Posters all across my walls. And so it was hard for me to get on board with Beyonce because all I saw was her body. All I saw was the way that she used her body in music and in posters, in the world.

[Wesley Morris]

Okay, but now, as a Beyonce scholar, unofficially, what changed?

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Two things happened. One is I started to go on my own journey of self acceptance and my own journey of self love. And maybe Beyonce did too, because the way she was showing up in her body started to feel different. She's embracing her body. She's embracing the curve. She's letting it change shape, you know, in all these new ways. I mean, the. When she. Listen, when she comes out, all homecoming. That's stomp I have watched more times than I would like to admit publicly. But there's something about seeing a woman fully embrace who they are and delight in their body, and especially the way it's coming out on this album.

[Wesley Morris]

Y' all were on this journey together, whether you knew it or not.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

She brought us along for her journey, and I appreciate that. But I think a lot about a song called Church Girl, because it's the one where Beyonce talks so explicitly about her body and releasing it and letting go of it. So there's this idea of church hurt. If you grew up in, around, or adjacent to a church and happen to be a queer person, you're probably familiar with church hurt and a feeling of seeking belonging. And, you know, the way the club is analogous to the church for some.

[Wesley Morris]

Of us, different forms of release and.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Different forms of religion, different forms of connecting with something greater than yourself. And understanding nightlife and understanding the club and understanding the club as a spiritual place. A place where a lot of seedy things happen in the corners. And that's what you go for. You go to be near it. And sometimes you. If you're me, you want to be in those corners. And. And the space is created for that. I will never not live for that. I will be 80 years old, and one of my queer babies will be wheeling me in, and I will have on, like, a little tiara. And to create the space where you have the glamour and then you have everything else right below it. That is the important part of the club. Yes, for me, for someone who grew up in the church, but not through their parents or through their family of origin structure, I listen to a song like Church Girl and I'm immediately transported back into a place of both spirituality and secular pleasure. When as soon as I get in this party, I'm gonna let go of this body. I'm gonna love on me Nobody can judge me I'm free I'm gonna love.

[Beyoncé (quoted lyrics)]

On me Nobody can judge me but me I'm gonna.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

That part of the song when she starts singing Born Free, and it's so fluttery and it's so bird like, and you can feel, like, the wings batting. And the way she.

[Wesley Morris]

The way she says me. Yeah. The way the. The me goes up.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

The word itself itself flies away. Like, you feel this aviation in it. And it made me really emotional the first time I heard it. And that song is drawing from a song called Center Thy Will.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, the Clark sisters.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

And the Clark Sisters.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

So center Thy Will in my mind is a song that is asking to release to the unknown and to bring that into this song that's about releasing your body. This song that's talking about being born free. If you can bring that into your body, you will find peace, you will find love, you will find community. Perhaps what Beyonce is saying is in an album that's entirely about queerness, we were made this way. And being queer is divine. It is. I mean, we know that, but like, to have someone of our community to say that, to have someone who is loved by churchgoers, church pastors alike, Beyonce's of the church. To have someone be saying blackness is inherently queer. Blackness is inherently outside of white normativity, white institutions. So I'm not knocking on any doors trying to get in. Don't get me wrong. You know, I show up every year for the marches. I go to Dyke march, I go to the row marches. I go to all these things. I understand the importance of legal protection. And I also understand the reality that those things were never meant for us. We're always the ones who get the shortest end of that stick. And that's not my queer politic. So in terms of how Beyonce's maybe thinking about how she wants to use her platform in this moment in time to talk about queerness and allyship, I do think it actually exists in those handful of seconds where she just turns into a tiny sparrow and sings her version of freedom, which is that queerness is just inherently godly, whatever that word means to you. That's our show Still Processing is produced by Elissa Dudley with Christina Jose and Hans Buteau. We are edited by Sarah Saracen and Sasha Weiss.

[Wesley Morris]

The show is mixed by Marian Lozano and recorded by Maddie Masiello.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

Digital production by Mahima Chablani. Our photo editor is Esla Attar and.

[Wesley Morris]

Our theme music's by kindness. It's called World Restart from the album Otherness.

[Jay Caspian Kang]

We will be back next week working cozy, comfortable with who we are. Until then, we gonna up the.