BEYONCE PART 2: SOLO SUPERSTAR (with Julianne Escobedo Shepherd)
Part 2/4!
Beyonc\xe9\u2019s latest solo album, Renaissance, drops on July 29th so to get everyone prepared, Pop Pantheon will be releasing a series of four episodes on the work and legacy of Queen Bey, each with a different guest!
In our second installment, DJ Louie is joined by author and journalist Julianne Escobedo Shepherd to discuss the first decade of Beyonc\xe9\u2019s solo career. Louie and Julianne begin with Beyonc\xe9\u2019s first steps outside of Destiny\u2019s Child, including her film appearances in 2001\u2019s MTV\u2019s Carmen: A Hip Hopera and 2002\u2019s Austin Powers in Goldmember, as well as on record with \u201cWork It Out\u201d and, most importantly, her feature on future-husband Jay-Z\u2019s smash 2002 hit \u201c\u201803 Bonnie and Clyde\u201d. They then discuss the major themes of the first period of Beyonc\xe9\u2019s solo music: ecstatic monogamous love, betrayal and infidelity, wealth accumulation and imbalanced gender dynamics and how they\u2019re all represented on Beyonc\xe9\u2019s first solo album, 2003\u2019s blockbuster Dangerously in Love and amplified on her second, 2006\u2019s funky, terse fan-favorite, B\u2019Day. They then dig into how B\u2019Day\u2019s harder edge and relative commercial underperformance-- and the attention her co-star Jennifer Hudson swept up from under Beyonc\xe9 in the film adaptation of the musical Dreamgirls-- led to the more widely-appealing, if less singular, I Am\u2026 Sasha Fierce in 2008, and, after firing her father Mathew as manager, how Bey began to shape a new phase of career with 2011\u2019s languid, lowkey 4, in which she was no longer beholden to trends or hit-chasing, expanding her impact into something much greater than conventional pop stardom and providing the platform for the thrilling audio-visual projects which would both define the next decade of her career and change the music industry forever.\xa0
Stay tuned for next week\u2019s installment, in which we\u2019ll dive into 2013\u2019s BEYONC\xc9 the visual album, 2016\u2019s Lemonade, 2018\u2019s Everything is Love, 2019\u2019s Homecoming and 2020\u2019s Black is King!\xa0
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