On Sunday February 11, the famous pop star, Beyoncé, announced that she will be going down the country road once again. Midway through the Super Bowl, she dropped two brand new tracks, and announced details of her upcoming album. 

Beyoncé made her announcement through a Super Bowl commercial ad for Verizon. The campaign showed Beyoncé failing to break the internet with stunts including a hologram (Beyonc-AI), a film called ‘Barbey’, and a presidential run. The ad ended with the singer saying, “OK, they ready. Drop the new music. I told y’all the ‘Renaissance’ is not over.” Two new tracks, “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages” immediately appeared on streaming services, along with details of a new album.

The album was confirmed as Renaissance II, the follow up to 2022’s Renaissance, and the second part to her planned trilogy with a third part coming in the future. Cited in The Fader, she explained: “This three act project was recorded over three years during the pandemic. A time to be still, but also a time I found to be the most creative.”

This is not Beyoncé’s first rodeo when it comes to country music. She experimented with the genre with her track “Daddy Lessons”, from her 2016 album, Lemonade. When she submitted the track for the country category at the Grammy’s, The Academy’s Country Music committee refused it.

Beyoncé received much backlash for the complicated history with country music concerning race. She fed off of the people that told her she couldn’t do it, and used it as motivation to prove them wrong. That is exactly what she did.