Bitch I’m BLACK:

As art is customarily a reflection of various contemporary values and conditions of the culture(s) from which it is produced, the lineage preceding disco and house reflects the struggles of the (imbricated) Black, queer, and Latine communities who amassed and blended their various pre-existing sounds and movements these new ones. They imbued their experiences battling various cycles and reconstructions of oppression and privilege, visibility and erasure, mobility and immobility into not only the genres being analyzed in this paper but also the various sounds that formed them, including but not limited to jazz, soul, funk, EDM, and samba. These histories are all present in “COZY” and its larger body of work, RENAISSANCE. Some important things to note include that some of the analytical subjects that I will be using are related to archives, but my sample is contemporary and uses archival materials, including the internet itself, and while Beyoncé is providing a positive trans/queer object- her music- neither she herself nor her celebrity persona is one. Nevertheless, the analysis here simply extracts whatever useful information for and contribution to discourses on Black queer (trans) liberation that it can from the piece. This is important to note because disco and house have a complicated history of being brought into the mainstream and given visibility to a largely cisheterosexual audience. This history, as well as its contemporary realities, will be addressed in the following pages through various lenses- from the transfeminist perspectives of Nsambu Za Suekama and Ts Madison along with the academic--theoretical lens of Calvin Warren.  

Before analyzing "COZY" through a sociocultural lens, it must be analyzed through a sociohistorical one. It is attributed to several different genres- all of which contain a rich history of Black artistry and oppression- but the main two are house and deep house with elements of R&B. House itself is descendant directly from disco, which is derivative from the French term discothèque. The foundation for dance culture was actually laid in WWII Europe, born from a musical counterculture that popularized public, evening dance parties with a DJ and turntable. However, it must be stressed that the foundation for dance culture was not the same as disco culture, because in the process of its migration from Europe to the United States, a few key aspects of these parties changed in order to create a larger yet more interactive--intimate experience among all those present, including having multiple turntables, relocating them and the DJ to the stage in front of the dancers, and utilizing larger venues with more dancers. The political climate of antiqueer terror forced many marginalized people underground, into subcultures seeking and imagining new forms of being and acceptance. By the early 70s, the interaction of these Black, queer, and Latine communities with each other’s cultures created an entirely new genre, not just of music but also life. There is no coincidence that the Black Panther Party, Young Lords, and Gay Liberation Front were all formed in the late 60s and reached their heyday in the 70s when disco culture simultaneously reached its cultural zenith. While the counterculture of the 60s was fading, disco culture found its root in its established culture of “pleasure and generosity.” Furthermore, Black and other Third-World (especially feminist) liberation movements and frameworks- especially identity politics- were still very prominent and amplified this culture of acceptance. 

The rebellious yet accepting nature of disco culture made it very easy to spread to the very white mainstream society that violently pressured the need for the creation of these clubs in the first place. Saturday Night Fever (1977) is credited with thrusting disco into the mainstream, but it was also due to the combined efforts of several different record labels- including Motown and Philadelphia International Records- encouraging artists to record more disco tracks like superstar Donna Summer. The mainstream popularity was shortlived, however, due to the materialization of white rock fans’ latent racism and queerphobia at Disco Demolition Night. With Black pop music overtaking the music landscape, white music fans felt threatened that they no longer dominated such a prominent aspect of their culture; something had to be done. On July 12, 1979, Steve Dahl exploded a pile of thousands of disco and other Black music records at Comiskey Baseball Park, donated by countless other whites (official attendance around 50,000) also calling for ‘death to disco.’ This adds even deeper levels of malevolence to Dahl’s event because it represents a reclamation of American identity (Whiteness) not only through his use of a baseball stadium to perform this act but also by literally destroying Black culture (in a White space); this reclaim to power shows that what defines Whiteness to him and his followers- a large portion of White America at the time- is the destruction and near annihilation of any traces of color or queerness that threaten the status quo. Soon thereafter, the popularity and profitability of disco plummeted: disco singles fell off the charts, disco artists couldn’t find work, labels rebranded ‘disco departments’ to ‘dance departments,’ and much more. 

Remembering that the state and nature of disco culture reflect those of its communities and that this gratuitous violence is nothing new to Black communities, it is no surprise that this did not cause, 

“... anybody at the disco level [to be] thrown into deep despair. They had to adjust to how the record companies now worked, but it just meant that there was a lot of really interesting music still coming out that was danceable, which is kind of where disco started – a lot of oddball danceable records that didn’t need to be called anything.” (Aletti) 

In the same way that marginalized communities can go into hiding underground for safety and rejuvenation- especially radical leftist ones such as the three aforementioned grassroots activist organizations- disco artists, entertainers, and other cultural figures simply readjusted themselves to this terrain that the white cisheteropatriarchy formed in defense of itself, because they were a part of those same communities. As Aletti said, disco thrived in the underground because that is where it was birthed. Originally, I was going to say that house rose from the ashes of disco during this period, but that would be disingenuous now that I know disco never died to those who created and partook in the culture. Rather, like the flower that blooms in a dark room, disco returned to the underground to give birth to the reimagined Black queer response to the violence that hypervisibility wrought on July 12, 1979. This response was house music, with its main delineations from disco being its less pop-oriented and more R&B-esque beats as well as its heavier sound, including heavy kicks, production manipulation, and hi-hats. The lyrical content was the same, with uplifting messages inclusive of all communities but especially targeted to the genre’s pioneers. 

Forty years later, social unrest and political activism in America reached a peak compared to a national era none other than that of house and disco’s origin; not coincidental in any capacity was the reappearance of Black queers- especially Black transfems- at the frontlines of battle, both in the U.S. and abroad. In that regard, the sociopolitical landscape has not changed much since the last time house music was this popular. Also contributory to the sociopolitical and cultural context of this media sample is the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyoncé said about her RENAISSANCE project:

This three act project was recorded over three years during the pandemic… Creating this album allowed me a place to dream and to find escape during a scary time for the world… My intention was to create a safe place, a place without judgment. A place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking. A place to scream, release, feel freedom. It was a beautiful journey of exploration… A big thank you to my uncle Jonny. He was my godmother and the first person to expose me to a lot of the music and culture that serve as inspiration for this album. Thank you to all of the pioneers who originate culture, to all of the fallen angels whose contributions have gone unrecognized for far too long… To all of my fans. I hope you find joy in this music. I hope it inspires you to release the wiggle! Ha! And to feel as unique, strong, and sexy as you are. (Beyoncé)

I thought it important to include this excerpt regarding the album shared on her website. Uncle Jonny, who she also mentioned in “Heated”, helped care for both her and her sister when they were children but he passed away in the late ‘90s during the AIDS epidemic. Given his age, he was likely aware of and/or active in the disco culture when these genres were created and popular. It is unsurprising, therefore, that he related this important chapter in Black queer history to his niece, and that she was able to use this knowledge to elicit joy during times similarly tumultuous to his. 

We saw a revival of disco in the mainstream towards the beginning of the pandemic with Dua Lipa, BTS, Doja Cat, and Lady Gaga, followed by a subsequent house revival this past year with Beyoncé, Drake, and Megan Thee Stallion. Not all interpretations of the genre are successful nor necessarily honorable attempts. Despite being released only a month apart- and even though “Heated” was a Drake demo- his and Bey’s projects received widely different critical reception. The former only received an aggregate score of 73 on Metacritic while the latter has a 91, with leading publications like Pitchfork (6.6/10 and 9.0/10, respectively) and The Guardian (3/5 and 4/5) disappointed by Drake’s lost potential in using house beats with lackluster, uninspired lyricism. More important than the reaction by mainstream critics and the public, (especially Black) queer people denounced his album while praising Bey’s. It is an obvious representation of the inability to reproduce artistic quality without, on some level, honoring the sociocultural histories tied into its creation; he attempted to wrest house music from its Black queer history and layer his antithetically conceited and misogynistic musical persona atop it without contributing anything to the genre and culture itself. Alexis Petridis explains it very well when he says, “The lyrics offer a constant drizzle of peevish discontent and how-very-dare-you accusation; conjuring up, for the umpteenth time, a stunted adolescent world in which – if he’s not telling you how wonderful he is, or having it off, or about to have it off – his feelings are perpetually injured, everything is always everyone else’s fault and it’s all so unfair.” Dabbling in a genre pioneered by queer people meant to inspire unabashed self-expression, persistence despite oppression, unconditional acceptance, and ceaseless self-respect to instead perpetuate sexist, self-absorbed lyrics as a cisheterosexual culture-vulture prevented Drake from expanding his audience and signature sound in a way that adopting new sounds typically does for talented and accomplished artists.

Prior to this year, Beyoncé had never used house music, at least not to this extent, so this was an entirely new sound. Her most notable previous interaction with disco was “Blow” from her self-titled album, which is important to mention because her adoptions of these different sounds and cultures are normally socio-contextually appropriate and relevant. While much of that album was alternative R&B, “Blow” was clearly 70s and 80s Black pop, with very sexual lyricism and visuals (despite using no explicits), honoring the legacies of Janet Jackson, Donna Summer, Prince, and Diana Ross. Her next contribution to disco would later be “VIRGO’S GROOVE,” on which she also muses poetically on sexual activities with… but she again knows there’s a time and a place; so while sexual lyrics blanket the beats on her disco tracks, messages of self-empowerment are broadcasted on her house tracks. Even though “COZY” is the second song on the album, the intro, “I’M THAT GIRL,” is also a self-aggrandizing house track that transitions very well. They both utilize 4/4 rhythms and deep basslines, but the second track’s production feels more uniform and steadfast. The intro has a much more winding and unique approach to its melding of house and R&B, frequently changing beats and tempo with Beyoncé constantly changing her flow to match, but towards the end of the song it melts into a consistent, low, thumping bass until it transforms into the bare pulsing beat of “COZY.”

The first verse is much more applicable to Beyoncé herself at first listen compared to the other verses, continuing the theme of the first track. It addresses those who wish to limit her self-expression and thereby bridges a connection to the struggles of the queer community. While ‘daggers’ and ‘scars’ could be connected to each other as a symbol of antiBlack and queerphobic physical violence, the song’s connection to trans folx- especially with Honey Dijon, a Black transwoman, having co-produced and co-written the track- means that ‘scars’ can also relate to gender affirming surgeries. While the first verse definitely relates to her own symbolic and physical scars, such as her emergency cesarean when birthing her twins, as well as the listener’s (specifically those of the LGBTIA+ community), I also believe that these multiple interpretations- including a direct interpretation of words as potential violence and the embrace of pain for growth- can interact with each other to mean that we occupy this same space of freedom-making. Without her saying it, we somehow know she isn’t just talking about herself, but also us. 

Although deep house draws inspiration from both soul and funk, she and her producers chose a funkier beat to support the chant-like chorus, which makes sense considering the stylistic origins of funk. Its delineation from soul as a more danceable genre while still lamenting Black American hardship lends flexibility to derivative genres. The second verse offers one of the most overt displays of support from a cishet artist to the entire LGBTIA+ community, with the colors in each line painting Daniel Qasar’s “Progress” Pride Flag (which specifically brings awareness to queerphobia against marginalized Black and brown queer- especially trans- people and everyone lost to or suffering with AIDS). This is an example of the positive visibility that house music brings to the queer community at large. Despite the (trans)misogynoir and transmisia experienced by Black people of marginalized genders in Black spaces, and the antiBlackness experienced by Black queers in queer spaces, Black queer and gender-marginalized people still support all subjugated communities in our path to liberation. Most specifically, this song is about the Black transfems who experience this ostracization on all levels.

Here is a synoptic excerpt of the viral Ts Madison video, “B**ch I’m BLACK”, from which Beyoncé pulled her quotes in the song (quotes are italicized):

I'm black. I'm probably one of the Blackest motherfuckers walking around here in this motherfucking place. I'm probably one of the Blackest motherfuckers in this county. I'm Black like that. I’m so tired of seeing the division between Black and Black queer… because at the end of the day we all face the same situation: we Black… I’m tired of being stepped on, smashed down, beat down, murdered, and none of my Black folks that I want to care caring… I’m tired of standing on the front line of scrimmage and acting like I don’t see and know that these niggas ain’t gone do the same for me because I’m trans… When did I lose me being Black?... I wake up everyday, the first thing I see in the mirror is my Black skin. Second thing I see is me: my identity, who I am… Why do you hate me? Oh, you don’t want my kind of Black. You don’t fuck with my kind of Black. You don't want to be bothered with my kind of Black… You know we're stronger together than separate… They always seek justification in one of our deaths, in one of our murders. “Well you know they shouldn't be deceiving men… They should be who they is.” We are being who we are… I'm dark brown, darkskin, lightskin, beige, fluorescеnt beige, bitch, I'm black. (Madison)

The excerpts within the song all but confirm that this song was specifically written for Black transfems, but there is still a lot to unpack here. We can start by addressing the other sociopolitical context of the song: the increase in political upheaval and social unrest across the world, specifically across the Black diaspora. Two years before the release of RENAISSANCE, on Juneteenth, Beyoncé released “Black Parade” to encourage Black empowerment in wake of the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent riots. However, the Black trans community was screaming for assistance amidst the sea of cisgender, transantagonistic voices. Thus, I’d like to offer an excerpt from Calvin Warren’s Black nihilist article, “Onticide”:

Afro-pessimism refigures critical race theory from the position of the derelict object. It acknowledges that the black-as-object is situated outside of space, time, and the world, and therefore, the black “does not exist” in the world because it lacks symbolic placement (Fanon). Blackness is pure object delimiting the boundaries between the human subject and its predicating verbs… This, then, is the ultimate scandal or ontological violation of the New World: black flesh is reduced to devastating sameness, and becomes interchangeable, or fungible, within an economy of exchange… 

Black suffering is illegible and incommunicable because it lacks a proper grammar of enunciation. Suffering belongs to the human; it is an inescapable feature of  the ‘human condition.’... Queer theory and its grammar of suffering fails the black-as-object here; its posture toward emancipation and freedom, do not fit the (non)ontology of blackness… It is the particularity of injury that cuts the object in multiple ways, and this injury, or “suffering,” is compounded by the fact that the “black queer” does not exist either as a human-subject or a “distinct” homogenous-object. Any particular injury directed at this object is incomprehensible and unthinkable... The “black queer,” then, is a catachresis. The problem I am laying out here is… whether the injury directed at this being is registered as anti-blackness at all [emphasis added]. The prevailing problem is that the injury sustaining this catachresis is so incomprehensible that it is doubly erased, and this is what I will call ‘onticide.’ (Warren)

This is why Madison referred to herself as “Blacker than Black.” Warren essentially explains how arguments surrounding intersectionality involve much deeper systems of oppression on an ontological and sociogenic level than we realize; our current world order, along with the metaphysics that drives it, is sustained by this onticide. If we analyze the position of Black transfems from inside the looking glass of Western science, Suekama says, “We are seen as a "stumbling block," so to speak, in the way of Black people's quest to be given humanity and civilized, non-criminalized status… More than just considered inhuman, Black trans women and transfeminine people are painted as essentially monstrous, and the premier evidence of what is wrong with Black people in the history of evolution.” (Suekama) When race and the Human/Man were configured, Africans were the models for the diametric opposite of and antithesis to Man: carnal and animalistic depravity, especially any displays of gender or sexual variance/deviance, fatness, and disability when compared to the continually-reconstructed Man. 

Black queer people- specifically transwomen, transfems, and other gender nonconforming people- thus come to represent an abject rejection of Man, and “COZY” an abject rejection of the queerphobia and transmigynoir that he lives off of. The Black queer response to the violence wrought by the politics of visibility exhibited in this song, in house music, and in the community at large, is not only a refusal to choose between hiding or mass death, but also an assertion of self-determination, self-aggrandizement, and self-respect in the face of violence, as well as an embracement of the underground as commons. The destruction of global capitalism and embrace of anarchy, nor the deconstruction of Western metaphysics and biopolitics and reconstruction of sciences not built on oppression can happen soon enough, but the embracement of the underground and defense of movements on the ground- to secure both the safety and pursuit of happiness for all, but especially Black, marginalized peoples who are down for the cause- has always been the battle plan for Black queer folx. 

Works Cited

“History of Disco.” Timeline of African American Music, https://timeline.carnegiehall.org/genres/disco.  

“House Music Guide: A Brief History of House Music - 2022.” MasterClass, https://www.masterclass.com/articles/house-music-guide.  

Petridis, Alexis. “Disco Demolition: the night they tried to crush black music.” The Guardian, 19 July 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/19/disco-demolition-the-night-they-tried-to-crush-black-music. 

Petridis, Alexis. “Drake: Honestly, Nevermind review – brand new moods, same old moans.” The Guardian, 18 June 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jun/17/drake-honestly-nevermind-review-brand-new-moods-same-old-moans. 

Snorton, C. Riley. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. University of Minnesota Press, 2017. 

Suekama, Nsambu Za. “Femme Queen, Warrior Queen: Beyond Representation, toward Self-Determination.” Red Voice, 5 Apr. 2021, https://redvoice.news/femme-queen-warrior-queen-beyond-representation-toward-self-determination/.  

Warren, Calvin. "Onticide: Afro-pessimism, Gay Nigger #1, and Surplus Violence." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 23 no. 3, 2017, p. 391-418. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/659880.