Destiny’s Child

For many decades, going as far back as the 1940s, artists from the world of R&B couldn’t really claim mainstream success until they’d crossed over to Top 40 radio and the pop charts. This century, it often feels more like the pop world is crossing over to R&B. The genre has never been more successful, relevant, or ambitious. Many of this century’s epochal blockbuster albums are R&B records: from Usher’s 10-times platinum Confessions, to Beyonce’s Lemonade, to Mariah Carey’s The…

It’s been 470 calendar days since Beyoncé gave her stans an inkling that a Renaissance visual album was coming. In the year following the release of her seventh studio album, the BeyHive relied on their improvisational skills to keep them engaged throughout its nontraditional rollout. They made viral dance challenges to “Cuff It” on TikTok; tried to replicate Bey’s melismatic bridge from “Virgo’s Groove”; and when the came time for everybody to be “on mute” during the “Energy” segment of Renaissance World Tour shows,…