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Who Slays? Queer Resonances in Beyoncé’s Lemonade Lauron Kehrer

Department of Music, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA

ABSTRACT This article examines ways in which Beyoncé’s Lemonade incorpo- rates, exploits, and otherwise engages queer artists and their communities. In addition to the inclusion of Big Freedia on “Formation,” a close reading of Lemonade reveals lyrical and sty- listic references to queer cultures. Lines such as “Slay trick, or you get eliminated” draw on the language of Ballroom culture. In the “Formation” video queer performers were featured prominently but went largely uncredited and uncompensated. An examination of the singer’s selective support for LGBTQ rights illuminates the complexities of the singer’s relationship to her queer fans and her indebtedness to queer cultures.

On Saturday, 6 February 2016, a day before appearing during the Super Bowl halftime show, Beyoncé released a surprise music video for a new song, “Formation.” The first single from Lemonade, her visual album that would be released a few months later in April, “Formation” was the track that launched a thousand think pieces. In a New York Times-published conversation with Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham, for example, pop music critic Jon Caramanica described the significance of some of the political imagery that characterizes the video, especially those scenes where Beyoncé is posi- tioned on top of a sinking New Orleans police car and a young black boy in a hoodie dances in front of a line of police officers. He writes:

In “Formation,” [Beyoncé] returns to [New Orleans]; this time, she’s in scenes that suggest a fantastical post-Katrina hellscape, but radically rewritten. . . .

This is high-level, visuallystriking [sic], Black Lives Matter-era allegory. The [Super Bowl] halftime show is usually a locus of entertainment, but Beyoncé has just rewritten it – overridden it, to be honest – as a moment of political ascent. (Caramanica et al.)

The three commentators raise the question of whether “Formation” marks Beyoncé’s turn from celebrity pop star to activist, and whether it is possible to be both. In a piece penned for The Daily Beast on the day of the song’s release, Kevin Fallon similarly acknowledges that “Formation” is both a “black power anthem for the masses” and “another entry in Beyoncé’s canon of dance floor calls-to-arms.” “Formation” unapo- logetically focuses on black American experiences and comments on contemporary issues of racial justice, an emphasis so unusual for the singer that, a week after the

CONTACT Lauron Kehrer [email protected]

POPULAR MUSIC AND SOCIETY 2019, VOL. 42, NO. 1, 82–98 https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2019.1555896

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

single’s release, the popular comedy show Saturday Night Live aired a sketch in which white Americans listening to the track discover, seemingly for the first time, that the singer is herself black (“The Day Beyoncé Turned Black”).

Although many journalists, scholars, and fans agreed that “Formation” represented Beyoncé’s most political work to date, others, such as Shantrelle Lewis, took issue with the singer’s use of New Orleans as a backdrop for her foray into Black Lives Matter politics. Reflecting in a piece for Slate on the ways in which the “Formation” video exploits New Orleans’ post-Katrina trauma and racial politics, Lewis pointed out that, while Beyoncé features the voices of two black queer New Orleans artists in the song, she fails to contextualize them or their work in a meaningful way:

“What happened at the New Wildins? . . . Bitch I’m back, by popular demand.” The words of the late bounce rapper and comedian Messy Mya braggadociously introduce Beyoncé’s anthem. A marginalized queer black man, Messy Mya in all of his wildest imagination, ribbing, and capping would not have believed that the world’s biggest pop star would use his voice in a video – without, however, acknowledging his humanity in life and in death. Messy Mya, a household NOLA name, was shot and killed at age 22. . . . In focusing on black New Orleanian lives, it would have been easy for Beyoncé to dedicate “Formation” to Messy Mya and other victims of gun violence. She provided no context for his life or death. Those not in the know could mistake his sassiness with that of the Queen of Bounce, Big Freedia, whose voice is heard a little later in the song. This is not gumbo. These are black lives. (Lewis)

Lewis focuses on the appropriation of New Orleanians’ trauma for the sake of a pop music video (regardless of the importance of its political message), but she also draws our attention to one of the song’s many paradoxes: in featuring New Orleans artists Messy Mya and Big Freedia, the song incorporates queer artists but renders their queerness invisible and inaudible through a lack of context and appropriate acknowledgement.

There is something decidedly queer about much of the lyrical and visual language of Lemonade, but, aside from Big Freedia, the album’s queer contributors and inspiration have been rendered largely invisible. Indeed, while “Formation” and the rest of the Lemonade visual album include a number of queer influences and resonances, few of the queer artists who contributed to the work are explicitly credited. Beyoncé’s refram- ing of queer artistic expressions in the context of her own work can be read as an example of cultural appropriation that undermines the queer performers’ subjective agency.1 This article examines ways in which Beyoncé’s most recent work incorporates, exploits, and otherwise engages queer artists and their communities. While several aspects of Lemonade demonstrate this problematic engagement, I focus primarily on the album’s now iconic single, “Formation,” which, as the above commenters show, can be understood both as part of the larger conceptual album and as a stand-alone work with its own reception history prior to the album’s release. By contextualizing the visual album within Beyoncé’s public stances (and silences) on issues pertaining to LGBTQ rights, I situate the work as part of the ongoing politicization of the performer and her music. Drawing on fieldwork I conducted in New Orleans a few months after the single’s release, I then consider the contested inclusion of queer art and artists in “Formation.” The artists with whom I spoke expressed conflicted feelings in response to Beyoncé’s engagement with black queer New Orleans – excitement at seeing bounce,

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a music culture specific to New Orleans in which openly queer participants are highly visible, represented on screen and sonically on the track, and dismay that many of those queer artists whose work was used did not receive any kind of credit or compensation. Ultimately, I suggest that Beyoncé’s engagement with aspects of black LGBTQ cultures in Lemonade is problematic but underscores her radical reframing of alternative kinship networks among black women.

Many scholars and critics have written about Beyoncé’s emerging feminism, espe- cially as it relates to legacies of black feminism, and most would agree that, while the artist’s public engagement with gender politics has evolved over the course of her career, her feminism remains complicated (Hall; Gibson). For example, Kai Arne Hansen notes a discrepancy between “Beyoncé’s self-presentation as a feminist and her employment of audiovisual aesthetics that objectify the female pop artist according to normative expectations of gender and sexuality” (165).2 Similarly, her support for and relationship to LGBTQ communities has evolved, largely in step with wider social acceptance of LGBTQ people and recent legal victories that have made it safer for celebrities to speak openly about their support with less risk to their professional careers. And yet, while Beyoncé has become increasingly vocal in favor of LGBTQ rights, this support, like her feminism, remains complicated by her actions and, at times, inaction. In fact, her engagement with LGBTQ culture and artists reflects the complications of her emerging feminist politics that center neoliberal, capitalistic, and heteronormative values.

Beyoncé and LGBTQ Politics

Beyoncé has an inconsistent track record when it comes to speaking openly about her support for LGBTQ people. At the same time, however, she is widely touted as a gay icon in the spirit of Cher or Barbara Streisand: a straight woman whose fan base includes a large number of LGBTQ fans who identify strongly with the star and her music. A brief timeline outlining her most recent public statements regarding issues affecting LGBTQ Americans illustrates that such statements largely support her own economic interests and follow a liberal approach to LGBTQ rights, often in a coded rather than explicit way.

One of the earliest examples of Beyoncé’s public support for LGBTQ equality appears in an interview with gay magazine Instinct in 2006 (Wood). The singer notes that, growing up, she was very close to a gay uncle who had died from AIDS-related illness and that she saw no conflict between supporting LGBTQ people and practicing her Christian faith. Five years later, she gave another interview with the gay press, this time with PrideSource, in which she acknowledges her connection to her gay fans:

Most of my audience is actually women and my gay fans, and I’ve seen a lot of the younger boys kind of grow up to my music. It’s great when I’m able to do the meet and greets, because I’m able to really connect and have conversations. People look at some of the artists that I admire – like Diana Ross and Cher – and they identity [sic] that glamour with Sasha Fierce [the performer’s alter ego], and I’ve been really inspired by the language. I have my (gay) stylists and my makeup artist, and all of their stories and the slang words I always put it in my music. We inspire each other. Like I said, we’re one. (qtd. in Azzopardi)

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Beyoncé places herself in a lineage of women singers who have served as gay icons, while also acknowledging the impact of her gay fans’ and team members’ experiences and culture on her own creative output. Furthermore, as the documentary Waiting For B. demonstrates, many of Beyoncé’s LGBTQ fans, especially those who are queer and trans people of color, relate very strongly to her music and public persona. According to The Fader, the film, which examines a group of the singer’s Brazilian LGBTQ fans who camp out in anticipation of her performances in their country during the 2013 Mrs. Carter Show World Tour, “reveals what queer fans around the world get from Beyoncé – the space and permission to be bolder and freer than white heteronormative society allows” (Lee).

Beyoncé’s acknowledgment of her LGBTQ fans and members of her team certainly helps increase the overall visibility of queer and trans people in a positive way, particularly regarding the often behind-the-scenes work they produce. Furthermore, the ways in which fans, such as those featured in Waiting For B., identify with the singer highlight the intersectional needs of queer and trans fans of color. They see, reflected in the star, aspects of themselves that are not always recognized in mainstream culture. In her recep- tion history of the Latina superstar Selena following her death, Deborah Paredez notes a similar experience among Latinx drag performers who impersonate the singer and their queer audiences. Selena drag “provides an affirming practice for making queer Latina/o identifications visible to both larger queer communities and to Latina/o communities of origin . . . [it] facilitates the consolidation of a specifically Latina/o camp sensibility that disidentifies with conventional drag’s racialized and classed standards of glamour” (174). While Beyoncé’s narrative does not hold the same potential for queer readings as Selena’s, the presence of a successful diva-figure whose racial identity reflects that of her queer listeners and impersonators provides a focal point around which an affirmational commu- nity identity can be built and counters the often tragic often narratives that, as Paredez points out, are all too frequently ascribed to Latinx and black LGBTQ individuals (182).

Beyoncé’s open acknowledgement of her gay fans, particularly through LGBTQ- targeted media such as PrideSource, aligns with other aspects of the singer’s performa- tive personal narrative. As Hansen (drawing on Hawkins and Richardson) has argued, artists such as Beyoncé use personal narrative through their music, interviews, and other media (including the biographical documentaries Beyoncé has released) to curate their personae and construct their identities as performers. Hansen suggests that “by presenting certain aspects of personal biographies as significant while bypassing others, pop artists guide audiences in making sense of past events, while also providing points of reference that will inform interpretations of future actions” (165). He continues: “In the case of Beyoncé, notions of her private self operate as integral to a representational strategy that crafts her persona through a continuous (re-) negotiation of the supposed synchronization of the artist’s private and public lives. Beyoncé’s self-presentation revolves around the notion of her being in control of her artistic output” (166). Hansen focuses on ways in which Beyoncé fashions herself as a feminist pop star in relation to her musical and video output, but the concept of personal narrative also helps situate her comments on LGBTQ fans and communities. Beyoncé voices her support for LGBTQ equality, making a pro-LGBTQ stance part of her carefully crafted personal narrative and thus guiding fans to interpret her creative output and future actions as part of that ongoing support.

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Having established that queer people make up a significant portion of her fan base and of the creative team around her, Beyoncé later began voicing support for one of the mainstream LGBTQ rights movement’s most visible campaigns: the push for marriage equality. In March 2013, when the United States Supreme Court began to hear two marriage equality cases, Beyoncé posted a photo of a handwritten note that read “If you like it you should be able to put a ring on it #wewillunite4marriageequality” on Instagram (2013). She signed the note simply “B.” The note referenced one of Beyoncé’s biggest hits, “Single Ladies” (2008), whose chorus states: “If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it.” Beyoncé further expressed her support for marriage equality by releasing a shortened version of her video for “7/11” on Instagram in July 2015 following the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, where the court ruled that LGBTQ Americans have a constitutional right to marry and that the federal government must recognize same-sex marriages. In this video, the singer appears dancing as she does in the original, but this time dressed in various rainbow-patterned outfits, in some frames waving a tiny rainbow flag, and in others even flashing a rainbow cape. The entire video is only 17 seconds long and ends with “#LOVEWINS” in white centered against a black background. It was released five days after the Supreme Court’s ruling, leaving some LGBTQ people wondering if the superstar was merely jumping on the marriage equality bandwagon after it became the law of the land (Deino).

Beyoncé’s LGBTQ fans did have good reasons to respond critically, if not cynically, to the gesture. The singer’s support for LGBTQ causes has been inconsistent at best, and exploitative at worst, and often seem timed to support capitalistic interests rather than political or personal values. For example, in February 2014 the singer released Valentine’s Day underwear gift sets that included “male–female, male–male and female–female varieties for all couples in love,” according to an article on huffington- post.com (Sieczkowski). The underwear sets featured the words “Yours” and “Mine” in pink lettering, a reference to the track “Mine” from the 2013 visual album, BEYONCÉ. While the underwear could be viewed as an inclusive approach to merchandising, it was merchandising nonetheless, with the sets of two pairs selling at $40 each. And while Beyoncé’s online store seemed to be inclusive of her gay fans, the singer herself has sometimes been silent on political issues deeply impacting the LGBTQ community. In November 2015, LGBTQ fans from the singer’s hometown of Houston, Texas, criticized her for her silence over the repeal of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), an ordinance approved by the city council in 2014 that prohibited discrimination in housing, employment, and other areas on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in addition to those categories already protected under federal law. After mounting a social media campaign to get the singer to encourage voters to oppose the repeal using the hashtag #BeyBeAHERO, a campaign that received national media coverage, LGBTQ Houstonians and activists were disappointed that the singer remained silent around the ordinance, even as other celebrities and politicians, including Hillary Clinton, expressed their support for HERO (Maza). In this instance, it was Beyoncé’s inaction and silence that seemed to suggest her complacency in revoking equal rights protections for several groups, but especially Houston’s LGBTQ community.

It was that same level of inaction that drew criticism when, in early May 2016, the singer declined to cancel her Formation World Tour performance in Raleigh, North Carolina, in response to the House Bill 2 (HB 2), the so-called “bathroom bill” passed in

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March 2016 that targeted transgender people and made it illegal for them to use the restroom that matched their gender identity if it was different from the gender they were assigned at birth (Domonoske and Doubek).3 Additionally, as Noisey writer Allison Hussey recalls, the artist did not mention anything about the bill or its repercussions during her performance. Hussey notes that during the show, Beyoncé’s team posted a statement on her website endorsing the anti-HB 2 organization Equality NC, with links to where fans could purchase T-shirts to support their cause, but the writer, like many fans, felt that this action was not enough:

Beyoncé’s statement barely even qualifies as Beyoncé’s statement – It’s passive and luke- warm PR fluff that feels like an afterthought, delivered at exactly a time where almost no one was paying attention. Granted, the move is in line with Beyoncé’s tendency not to hammer directly on thorny social issues . . . [but] this is not the time to be wishy-washy or delicate. We know that it is no longer enough to just not be transphobic, or homophobic, or racist, or misogynistic. We must raise our voices and put our bodies to work against these aggressive evils. (Hussey)

Like many HERO proponents, Hussey expresses disappointment that the star did not do enough to explicitly confront anti-LGBTQ politics head-on, and that she opted instead to make a “lukewarm” statement that was just enough to indicate that she did not support HB 2, rather than using her platform to take substantive action to resist the legislation.

It is important to note that many of Beyoncé’s fans and critics, including the author of a scathing commentary on the singer’s lack of support for HERO, Carlos Maza, agree that celebrities are not obligated to be outspoken advocates for social justice issues (Maza). Indeed, most agree that Beyoncé’s constructed personal narrative necessitates a subtle approach to politics rather than sweeping statements. However, given the singer’s superstar status, as well as her indications that she supports her LGBTQ fans, it seems disingenuous to market merchandise to that community and yet remain silent on political battles that are poised to cause that community great harm. Additionally, the issues in which she does engage are most often aligned with a mainstream that emphasizes a homonormalizing approach to LGBTQ rights that largely benefits white, cisgender people seeking access to state-sanctioned markers of equality – marriage and active membership in the capitalist marketplace, for example.4 Nevertheless, as seen in Lemonade, Beyoncé incorporates aspects of specifically black and Latinx queer culture and queer labor in her work, sometimes without contextualization or compensation, placing herself in an exploitative relationship with those very communities she claims to support. In the following section, I examine some of the queer influences and resonances in Lemonade that further complicate this dynamic.

Queer Resonances in Lemonade

Lemonade has few explicitly queer moments, but allusions to queer cultures, especially those of queer and trans people of color, are embedded throughout the work. Turns of phrase, such as “boy, bye” (“Sorry”) and “I slay” (“Formation”), appear at various moments throughout the visual album, for the most part with their queer origins and contexts largely removed.5 One moment in which queer people are most obviously referenced comes near the end of the film when we see queer couples. As the penulti- mate track of the album, “All Night,” plays we see a montage of videos of couples,

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including Beyoncé and husband Jay-Z, as well as two same-sex couples. The couples, which include two women and two men, are shown being affectionate with one another in public spaces, sometimes kissing, while lyrics such as “True love never has to hide” underscore the visuals. In the context of the video, these couples highlight the diversity of monogamous romantic partnerships, but they are also shown as having successes and troubles as any other couple. Rarely, if ever, are gay couples featured in mainstream videos by heterosexual artists.6 This is a moment of explicit queer visibility, but the way in which the same-sex couples are presented reflects more similarities to than differ- ences from their heterosexual counterparts, thus reinforcing a homonormalizing narrative.

Most of the queer resonances in the visual album come from the music and accompanying video for its first single, “Formation.” As noted above, critics, scho- lars, and fans (including those working from the intersections of these groups) have focused on the racial and gender geopolitics of the track, noting in particular the pro-Black Lives Matter imagery and lyrics (Caramanica et al.; Fallon). However, the New Orleans that Beyoncé evokes in “Formation” implicitly and explicitly includes the city’s black queer and trans community. Some of these resonances, particularly those surrounding the use of language, have become so commonplace that they have taken on new, non-queer meanings in the mainstream imagination. Others, includ- ing some of the visual images used in Beyoncé’s work, are more blatant and, at times, exploitative.

For example, some lines from “Formation” that have come to be associated with black female empowerment, particularly “I slay” and “slay trick, or you get eliminated” originated within the predominantly black and Latinx LGBTQ Ballroom culture and, as such, have particularly queer meanings (2016). Marquis Bey suggests that Beyoncé’s insistent and repetitive utterances of the phrase “I slay” not only articulate a black feminist position, but they also serve to queer the track:

Slaying is a modality of troubling the narrative. To slay, especially for Queen Bey, is to incite an insurgency from within whatever confines one finds oneself, to shatter the neat lines of boundaried normality, to queer. Her slay-tastic insurgency is the deathblow to the fire-breathing dragon of the violence of the normal and normative, which manifests in far too often fatal forms of white and male supremacy. (176)

Marquis Bey draws important connections between “Formation” and black death, arguing that “the juxtaposition of the (Black) queerness of the very term ‘slay’ and the slain Black bodies [represented in part by the presence of Messy Mya’s voice] marks this ‘pro-Black” anthem as always, and already queer” (175). Such queer utterances, then, allow queer listeners, especially black queer listeners, to hear themselves in Beyoncé’s work and create space for a queer reading (or rather, listening) of the song. However, these utterances are also presented out of context, taking control over the language away from its queer originators and allowing additional meanings attached to this language to go unheard. A brief examination of the use of “slay” in its originating Ballroom culture illustrates this point.

Ballroom culture first emerged in New York City in the 1980s, but its roots go even farther back to the pre-Stonewall riot era of the 1960s, when black drag queens who had been excluded from white drag balls formed their own events. At the heart of Ballroom

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culture are competitions, in which participants (some in drag, some not) from houses (frequently named after fashion houses, such as House of Dupree) vie for recognition through their appearance and their dance moves, including voguing. The goal is to “slay and snatch trophies,” as 2016 argues in his study of the culture (116).

“Slaying” is directly connected to notions of kinship within Ballroom culture. Ballroom participants compete on behalf of their houses, so for one to “slay” in a competition is to participate in kinship building. 2016 writes:

Within the Ballroom social sphere, where its members do not enjoy a wide range of intimacy with their biological families, Ballroom houses offer a space for care, service, competition, and critique among people who share similar life experiences. It is important to understand that not only is this bond drawn on characteristics of kin, but it is also based on a common competitive drive to “slay and snatch” trophies for a house as its individual members seek to gain legendary acclaim throughout the Ballroom scene. In other words, the work involved in parenting, bonding, “slaying and snatching,” and building a kin unit is central to creating an overall minoritarian sphere. (117)

The very language and concept of “slaying” is thus directly derived from Ballroom culture, and Beyoncé’s use of this language outside of its Ballroom context evokes both the competitive nature of balls and, as I will demonstrate, the kinship networks that “slaying” constructs and sustains.

The issue of language is significant here because it represents the repurposing of what Mark McBeth identifies as a strategy that gay men use to “self-identify and resist; they select to differentiate themselves from the dominant linguistic culture as a means of responding to what may oppress them” (106). The rhetorical practices of black LGBTQ people within Ballroom culture is especially pertinent because these practices exist and are shaped at the intersections of black expressive forms and queer world making. As E. Patrick Johnson notes, “Although cultural performances are reflective and reflexive as they maintain, critique, subvert, or even transgress indigenous cultural traditions, they are also appropriated by other cultures” (122). He argues that culturally specific expressions are recognizable and valuable only to a group with a shared context and understanding of those expressions – when they are removed from their origins, these expressions cease to carry their initial meanings and can be appropriated in ways that are detrimental to the community of origin. This is not to say that marginalized communities, such as the African American gay men on whom he focuses in his study, are unable to influence and contribute to a larger mainstream culture. Johnson writes: “I realize that no text is sacred because culture itself is not. We live in a world in which once an utterance, expression, or gesture leaves us, its meaning becomes contested, fair game for many interpretations” (139). It is these contested meanings, especially when they stem from a lack of attribution, that create the greatest point of contention in queer responses to Beyoncé’s latest work.

“Formation” was not the first instance of Beyoncé seemingly drawing inspira- tion from Ballroom culture. In the 2008 music video for “Video Phone” from her third studio album, I Am . . . Sasha Fierce (2008), the singer appears to have incorporated a dance move attributed to Latina Ballroom participant Leiomy Maldonado. Maldonado, sometimes referred to as the “Wonder Woman of Vogue,” was the first trans woman to appear on the television show America’s Best Dance Crew as part of the openly queer and trans group Vogue Evolution in

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2009. Maldonado’s signature move, known as “The Leiomy Lolly,” involves a repeated hair flip from a standing or squatting position. In the “Video Phone” video, Beyoncé, with her hair pulled back into a single ponytail, emulates this move at around the one-minute mark.

When asked in an interview in 2017 about how her signature move had been adopted by artists such as Beyoncé, Maldonado responded:

I can tell you that maybe five or six years ago, I thought it was amazing. I was so excited about it, that people were seeing and using what I started and created. However, as the years went by, I realized I was cheated. Although many knew where the moves came from, the people who were doing it weren’t giving me credit. It wasn’t even that I wanted them to cut me a check; I just wanted credit. (qtd. in Reichard)

For Maldonado, the experience of seeing major artists such as Beyoncé incorpor- ating her moves into their choreography was initially confirmation that vogue and other Ballroom-originating dance moves were legitimate. However, the lack of recognition for her own original contributions, even more than a lack of financial compensation, eventually changed her position. Yet Beyoncé continues to draw inspiration from the largely underground black and Latinx LGBTQ culture.

True to its geopolitics, the “Formation” video also incorporates the work of members of New Orleans’ LGBTQ community, including the aforementioned vocal samples of local bounce artists. The song opens with the lines: “What happened at the New Wildin’s? Bitch, I’m back by popular demand,” as spoken by the bounce rapper and comedian Messy Mya, the stage name of Anthony Barré, who was murdered in 2010. Messy Mya was a queer black man best known for his YouTube videos in which he sometimes addressed LGBTQ themes (such as in his video “Studs Pregnant for Punks” and a twerking competition between two male friends that he posted as “Messy Steddy v. Blazerboy Money [who won?]”); threw around catchphrases such as “Now who gonna pop me?” and “Follow me, camera!”; often insulted people; and generally documented and commented on life in his native New Orleans.

The lines featured in “Formation” come primarily from a YouTube video called “Booking the Hoes from New Wildin’.” Later in the song, in an interlude that appears about one minute into the video but not on the album version, another sample is taken from a different video, “A 27-Piece Huh?,” where Mya says, “Oh yeah, baby, oh yeah, I, ohhhh, oh, yes, I like that.” In “Formation,” these samples of Mya’s voice, anonymous to all but those familiar with the late artist’s work, are taken out of their original context and remixed to give a flavor of New Orleans to the track.

Big Freedia, the stage name of Freddie Ross, is another openly queer black New Orleans artist who appears on the track. Big Freedia is a gay man whose gender presentation leans towards the feminine (she nearly always appears with long, professionally done nails, feminine hairstyles, and “women’s” handbags) and who prefers the pronouns she/her/hers (Hutt). While some non-New Orleans listeners may be familiar with Freedia from her reality show on the Logo television net- work, “Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce,” there is little beyond familiarity that could distinguish her lines in the interlude from those of Mya. On the track, Freedia states:

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I did not come to play with you hoes, haha I came to slay, bitch I like cornbread and collard greens, bitch Oh, yes, you besta believe it

Mixing her own catchphrases (“you besta believe it”) and cultural signifiers of the black American South (“cornbread and collard greens”), Big Freedia’s lines, indeed even her presence, also help position the track firmly in New Orleans.

Big Freedia and Messy Mya are both performers who have been associated with New Orleans bounce, a dance-based style of hip hop that developed in the city beginning in the early 1990s, when artists began using a sample from the Showboys’ 1986 song “Drag Rap” (a reference to the 1960s television show Dragnet) as the basis for their own tracks (Miller). The scene remained primarily within the New Orleans region because artists who had national ambitions directed their sound away from the distinctively local bounce beats in order to have a wider appeal. It was not until recently that bounce has gained a national audience, and that attention has been largely due to the critical mass of openly queer and trans artists working in the genre, as well as the national spotlight on styles of dancing associated with the genre, particularly twerking.

In the recovery period immediately following Hurricane Katrina, which made land- fall outside of New Orleans on 29 August 2005, and had a long-lasting, devastating impact on the city, openly queer and trans bounce artists, who had been on the scene for several years, began their rise to dominance. Artists such as Sissy Nobby and Katey Red were able to book shows at venues desperate for live performers, and they also were able to find gigs for other rappers who were part of their extended queer kinship network, a network that was both professional and personal in nature. Much like the house system of the Ballroom scene, many sissy bounce artists belong (or at one time belonged) within a hierarchical family structure in which more seasoned performers and older members of the community act as “gay mothers” or, less often, “gay fathers” to younger, less experienced members. For example, Sissy Nobby is Big Freedia’s gay daughter, indicating that Freedia has served in some ways as a mother figure or mentor to Nobby. Not all members of this network are bounce artists: for example, in her memoir, Big Freedia mentions that Mark Tavia, a “sissy” from her neighborhood, became her gay mom when she was a teenager (Freedia and Balin 13). The kinship network does, however, include artists, and their personal and professional ties have allowed them to help each other and become among the most visible and influential artists currently working in bounce.

Noticing this trend of increased visibility and popularity of openly queer and trans rappers, local music journalist Alison Fensterstock coined the term “sissy bounce” to describe the phenomenon. While the term calls attention to the work and popularity of queer artists, it has not been widely embraced by the artists themselves: indeed, many push back against it, arguing that while they are open about their identities and sexualities, there is no such thing as sissy bounce, but just bounce, a musical tradition of which some queer and trans artists are a part. For example, Big Freedia told Time magazine:

We don’t separate it here in New Orleans at all. It’s just bounce music. Just because I’m a gay artist, they don’t have to put it in a category or label it. We have a lot of straight

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artists here, and they are offended by the term sissy bounce. We never did separate it here at home, and we don’t plan on it. (qtd. in Feeney)

Nevertheless, sissy bounce remains useful shorthand for referencing the artists who are largely responsible for bringing mainstream attention to the local style of music and dance. Big Freedia, whose reality television show has been on air since 2013, has been a major conduit for bounce’s increased popularity. The producer Diplo has worked with a few bounce artists, including the late Nicky Da B on a moderately successful track, “Express Yourself” in 2012 and Keno (formerly Fly Boi Keno) on a collaboration with Skrillex called “Beats Knockin’ ” in 2015. Bounce has also appeared in the work of other national performers who have not recognized local artists; for example, on 7 February 2016, a day after the surprise release of “Formation,” Missy Elliott premiered her track “Pep Rally,” a bounce-influenced track which also features lyrics that sound eerily similar to bounce artist Ha Sizzle’s “Bounce It Biggity Bounce It” (Ha Sizzle’s “Bounce it, biggity bounce it, biggity bounce it, biggity bounce it” becomes “Bounce, biggity bounce, biggity-biggity bounce, bounce”) and what sounds like a sample vocal from Big Freedia at the very end of the track.7 With the increased visibility and the growing networks of openly queer and trans bounce rappers, their music has become the most accessible to those not only within New Orleans but also beyond the city’s limits. They have become the tastemakers and influencers of the genre. Thus, it makes sense that national artists such as Beyoncé have jumped on the sissy bounce bandwagon after having largely ignored the local genre for decades.

The inclusion of bounce artists Big Freedia’s and Messy Mya’s vocals on “Formation” not only places the track firmly within geopolitics of New Orleans, but it also places the voices of queer artists of color within Beyoncé’s soundscape. Zandria Robinson (2016) suggests that “the voices and presence of genderqueer folks” enter the track to take us beyond the singer’s own limits. She writes:

They, in fact, ask of us the toughest questions. “What happened at the New Wil’ins?” queries Messy Mya from the grave, which Beyoncé encourages us to hear as a question about the comedian’s unsolved murder as well as a question about the city and black folks and the South: “What happened after New Orleans?” They also give us the most audacious commands to slay regardless, even if we are taken. We are thus propelled into the life and death, future-present-past the video conjures. (Robinson)

Robinson thus positions what she calls genderqueer people within the geopolitics of “Formation,” connecting black queer liberation with other aspects of the social justice imperative of the song. As with Bey’s approach, this intersectional reading certainly honors the presence of black queer and trans voices and identities within the song and rightfully suggests that their contributions are integral to broader political and social movements, but it does not necessarily reflect the wider reception of the song.

Representation or Exploitation?

Although Beyoncé helped to bring mainstream attention to the New Orleans bounce scene, this attention has not always translated into increased opportunities for the most marginal among bounce participants, who are also the most vulner- able. For example, the music video for “Formation” uses footage from a 2012 documentary short about New Orleans bounce directed by Abteen Bagheri called

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That B.E.A.T. While Beyoncé’s team clarified that they received permission from the owner of the footage to use it in the music video, the director, producer, and artists featured did not give their permission, nor were they compensated for their work (Tanzer and Kim). The dancers who appeared in the film, especially a young, gay male dancer, are featured in the music video uncredited. One of my informants was reluctant to speak about the situation on record, but did try to express the disappointment this young man and many of the other artists experienced when the single was released:

It’s not something that’s worth casting aspersions on anybody, I don’t actually blame anyone, I think this is just the expedience of the industry at large. And so it’s not like, oh Beyoncé’s supposed to be perfect because she’s famous! Or because she represents for black women or whatever. She doesn’t have to be perfect, she can’t get everything right. I don’t really care. But I do know that the dancer in question called me the morning after the video came out and was crying, and was sad. When I went to bed I was like, when he sees this I wonder if he’s gonna call me and be happy or sad. And I went to bed and I woke up and he called me and he was crying. I secretly hoped you would just be happy, because I knew there’s nothing we can do about it and he was like, I do too. If someone had just asked me, I would’ve given the right to use it away for free. (Anonymous)

The New Orleans artists involved do not have the financial or legal means to fight a major celebrity such as Beyoncé for compensation or recognition. As my source noted, it took their original work out of context and assigned control of the narrative away from the creators of their own work and to Beyoncé and her team. While the artists featured in That B.E.A.T. would have most likely said yes to appear in what has become an iconic video from the legendary singer, they were never even given the opportunity to decide for themselves.

Additionally, while Big Freedia was an acknowledged collaborator on the track, the late Messy Mya was not. Indeed, in February 2017, Messy Mya’s estate, executed by the late artist’s sister, Angel Barré, sued Beyoncé for $20 million and credit “as a writer, composer, producer, and performer” on the track (Legal Entertainment). In filing the lawsuit, Barré is seeking damages for “willful copyright infringement, false endorsement, unfair trade practices and unjust enrichments” (Brasted). Although there may certainly be financial motivation behind the lawsuit, like Maldonado and the anonymous dancer from That B. E.A.T., Mya’s family has primarily expressed disappointment that Beyoncé failed to give credit to a queer artist that she featured prominently in her work.

Even as these queer artists go unmentioned and sometimes uncompensated, their influence in Lemonade remains subtle yet undeniable. Most relevantly, queer modes of thinking and world making, especially as manifested in the queer kinship networks of Ballroom culture and sissy bounce, underscore the ways in which Lemonade reframes familial and genealogical structures among black women. Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner refer to queer culture as

a world-making project, where “world,” like “public,” differs from community or group because it necessarily includes more people than can be identified, more spaces than can be mapped beyond a few reference points, modes of feeling that can be learned rather than experienced as a birthright. . . . Making a queer world has required the development of kinds of intimacy that bear no necessary relation to domestic space, to kinship, to the

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couple form, to property, or to the nation. These intimacies do bear a necessary relation to a counterpublic – an indefinitely accessible world conscious of its subordinate relation. They are typical both of the inventiveness of queer world making and of the queer world’s fragility. (558; original emphasis)

Here, Berlant and Warner use kinship to refer to biological relationships determined primarily by heteronormative familial and legal structures. However, they note that queer world making relies on inventing new relations and social organizations. The development of alternative kinship networks is one such inventive response to the fragility of queer worlds.

Kinship is also an important theme of Lemonade, as black feminist scholar Treva Lindsey (2016) writes: “Lemonade wasn’t just a visual album about cheating; it was a visual album about the power of black women’s kinship across generations. It shows our communal spaces as healing, loving, and necessary.” While Lindsey and others have focused on expressions of black womanhood in Lemonade, especially the reframing of black women’s kinship networks within and outside of genealogical and familial lines, the influence of queer kinship networks on this reframing often goes unmentioned. In Lemonade, the evocations of Ballroom, sissy bounce, and other largely queer cultures help to support these reconfigurations of kinship by offering alternative kinship models that are not predicated on white supremacist heteropatriarchal familial structures, i.e. structures modeled on a nuclear family. In other words, the resonances of queer relationship structures suggest alternative, non-oppressive models that are echoed in Beyoncé’s representations of relationships between black women.8

Who Slays?

The disconnect between the queer resonances and influences in Lemonade and Beyoncé’s inconsistent track record in acknowledging and compensating queer artists raises impor- tant questions about the ethics of queer inspiration and appropriation in popular culture. As fans, critics, and scholars have noted, Lemonade offers one of the artist’s strongest statements about black womanhood to date, especially as it might be imagined and embodied in the American South. Are queer and trans people of color included in this vision? Or is their labor being exploited to serve capitalistic and artistic goals?

Lemonade also reveals the complicated relationship between the superstar and her queer and trans fans and collaborators. In not explicitly stating the contributions and influences of black queer and trans New Orleans rappers, mainstream artists are denying real material benefits to an already marginalized group. In the case of “Formation,” royalties could make a big difference in the lives of Messy Mya’s surviving family members, who come from poor and working-class backgrounds. Even non- monetary acknowledgement could bring attention to artists’ work. As one of the dancers featured in That B.E.A.T. noted, had he just been asked, he would have readily agreed to the use of footage of him in the “Formation” video. Lewis observed that “‘Formation’s failure to contextualize these artists or their work in a meaningful way allows the queer foundations of the song to go unnoticed.” Arguably, with the increased visibility of queer and trans communities and the violent backlash many, especially queer and trans people of color, now face, it is ever more crucial that national

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performers give the queer and trans artists who inspired and collaborated on their work credit where credit is due.

Beyoncé’s Lemonade illuminates the complexities of the singer’s relationship to her queer and trans fans as well as her indebtedness to queer culture. While queer and trans fans, especially queer and trans people of color, see themselves and their communities reflected in her lyrics, dance choreography, and visual images, the inspiration behind those images often goes unacknowledged and uncompensated. Like the singer’s femin- ism, her support of and relationship to LGBTQ communities remains complicated – sometimes her actions, or her inaction, undermine the support she has vocalized for this group. However, the inclusion of these queer-inspired aspects, especially the invocations of queer kinship networks, also points to ways in which these aspects can be reimagined in fruitful ways that resist white supremacist heteropatriarchal family norms and other oppressive structures.

Notes

1. Here I draw on contemporary critiques of Jennie Livingston’s 1991 film Paris is Burning, which explored the largely underground black and Latinx LGBTQ Ballroom scene in New York City. Following the release of the film and its subsequent commercial success, individuals who were featured in it pursued legal options for monetary compensation, which were denied. Additionally, as Philip Brian Harper notes, the film demonstrated the limits of subjectivity for the black and Latinx LGBTQ subjects of the film, as the medium itself inadvertently reframes their experiences and “serves the promotion of the auteur’s [Livingston’s] subjectivity, rather than, and at the expense of, that of the individual(s) understood to be the ‘subject(s)’ of documentary cinema” (98).

2. In this article, I am concerned with Beyoncé the public figure, or persona, which Hansen (drawing on Frith and Auslander) refers to as “the performer as social being,” rather than Beyoncé the individual (165). As Hansen notes, however, this persona is “partly constituted by the personal narratives that meticulously manage the presentation of particular aspects of identity and biography across platforms” (165–66). I would add that these platforms include audiovisual and print material produced by businesses con- nected to Beyoncé the performer and individual – that is, this persona also includes aspects of Beyoncé as a brand, with all of the capitalistic and philanthropic aims that designation might imply.

3. Portions of HB 2 were repealed in March 2017, including the bathroom requirement, but the bill prevents local governments from passing anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people until 2020. See Domonoske and Doubek.

4. While the mainstream movement for marriage equality has largely been led by primarily white organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign, scholars such as Sean Cahill have demonstrated that antigay policies and legislation disproportionally affect black and Latinx LGBTQ families. However, he also acknowledges that marriage equality alone does not address systemic racial discrimination that these families also face, noting that “Universal health care, expansions of affordable child care and housing, improvements in education and other economic justice strategies may help more LGBT people of color than would marriage equality” (246).

5. “Boy, bye” sounds much like the slang phrase, “Bye, Felicia,” which originated in the 1995 film Friday but was largely used in black and/or queer communities before crossing over into mainstream (largely white and heterosexual) popular culture. Use of this phrase has been much debated, particularly its use by white gay men. See, for example, D’Angelo and Moore and Pipkin.

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6. A notable exception to this is the music video for Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s 2013 song, “Same Love.”

7. New Orleans native K. Keon Foley-Griffin, also known as Keon the Connect, performs the hook and chorus on the track.

8. It is worth noting that some of the black women featured in the Lemonade film, specifically actress Amandla Stenberg, do identify as queer. Stenberg came out as bisexual just a month before the video’s premier in a snapchat for Teen Vogue. Responses to the film that focused on its queer aspects and actors largely noted the inclusion of Big Freedia, Messy Mya, and the queer dancers, however, which suggests that Stenberg was not read as queer in the context of this work.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the editors of this special issue, especially Christina Baade, for their guidance on this project, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback. Funding for fieldwork in New Orleans in 2016 was provided by the Adrienne Fried Block Fellowship from the Society for American Music and the Glenn Watkins Travelling Fellowship from the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, for which the author is grateful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Lauron Kehrer is an Assistant Professor of Music in the Department of Music at the College of William & Mary, where she teaches courses on American popular music and Western art music. Her work has appeared in American Music and on the website Inside Higher Ed. She completed her PhD in musicology and MA in ethnomusicology from the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester. Her current book project explores the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary American hip hop.

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