Beyoncé’s latest album makes her the undisputed queen of inclusion

Act II: Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé’s much-anticipated eighth album, is here. It is a joyful, focused, and purposeful follow-up to Renaissance, her trilogy project conceived during the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s also a shot across the bow for inclusion.
 
Based on fan reaction, it’s already a hit. 
 
The genius rollout of this album began at the Super Bowl, with a tantalizing promise of songs to come announced inside a splashy Verizon ad. “Drop the new music,” she said as the commercial ended, sending fans scrambling to find two new country-themed songs — “Texas Hold ’Em” and “16 Carriages” — and a promise of the full ride on March 29.
 
Then, in an Instagram post ten days ago, she made her motivations clear.
 
“I feel honored to be the first Black woman with the number one single on the Hot Country Songs chart,” she wrote. “My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist’s race, as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant.”
 
Like so many marginalized people, Black women in particular, her current triumph was triggered by exclusion.
 
“This album has been over five years in the making. It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed … and it was very clear that I wasn’t. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive. It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history.”
 
Two things are important to note here.
 
First, Beyoncé has delivered a multi-layered body of work filled with powerful nods, rich references, and meaningful collaborations, turning inclusion into a glorious art form. The album is “a jaw-dropping ode to the breadth of regional and musical subcultures of the American South,” says Billboard music reviewer Kyle Denis.
 
It operates as both a tribute and a fact-check.
 
While the album features some of country music’s boldest bold-faced names — Dolly Parton, Miley Cyrus, Willie Nelson — Beyoncé also includes people who should have been stars yesterday, like Linda Martell, the first commercially successful Black female country artist, whom I wrote about here. 
 
And she welcomes Black artists who should be stars today. Country newcomers Brittany Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, Tanner Adell, and Reyna Roberts collaborated with Beyoncé in a moving cover of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” (newly entitled “BLACKBIIRD.”)
 
“I’ve been knocking, banging, kicking on this door and Beyoncé really opened it,” Adele told ABC News. “I don’t know if that changes the systematic kind of gatekeeping thing of country music, but it does change who feels empowered to be there and show up and listen.”
 
But the album is also an act of justice and retribution that few working Black women can pull off, even with a stealth five-year runway. 

I’m thinking about you, Black women in academia. In tech. In leadership. Black women experiencing the kinds of things that made author and speaker Minda Harts — the Beyoncé of helping Black women survive at work — necessary.
 
Sometimes we can break down the barriers. Sometimes, watching Beyoncé do it has to be enough. For now.
 
And while I understand that the anti-DEI crowd is responsible for their own anguish by failing to embrace the joy of the world as it exists, I’m still holding space for so many of them. The country music radio station managers who will be inundated with calls demanding their favorite Cowboy Carter songs be in heavy rotation. The online folks who will face endless Cowboy Carter TikTok stitches, Insta duets, and audio snippets associated with every cute dog, cat, and fishing video. Your algorithm god is about to forsake you, and so is pretty much everyone you know.
 
We are all Cowboy Carters now.
 
To anyone unsure of how to understand the genre-bending onslaught about to happen, Beyoncé uses vintage sound from Linda Martell to help light the way.

I hope it helps.
 
“Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they? Yes, they are,” Martell says on the album. “In theory, they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand. But in practice, well, some may feel confined.”

A version of this essay was originally published in the Equity Observer email newsletter. Catch up on past issues here. Sign up for insightful commentary, breaking news, and community shout-outs delivered twice weekly. Find your people.