Beyoncé
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In GQ’s October cover story, the artist talks business, legacy, art, and family: “It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being revolutionary.”

Beyoncé is breaking out.

Midway through Cowboy Carter, her eighth and most recent studio album, released this past spring, a voice makes the project’s mission statement plain over blaring alarms and a thunderous beat—declaring the concept of genre to be a sense of confinement for those artists whose creativity is too wide-ranging to fit in a neat box. All before Beyoncé herself saunters in comparing herself to Thanos, the Marvel villain known for seeking precious stones of mystical power to claim as his own and assemble into one unified superpower.

There may not be an accompanying music video, but the lyrics conjure a potent visual: Beyoncé, armed with a bedazzled gauntlet, breaking down every stultifying wall, label, or box the industry ever tried to put her in across her 30-year career.

It’s a theme that applies to much of what Beyoncé has been up to for the past decade or so, especially in the last couple of years: a mission of reclamation, recentering Blackness in spaces where our influence has since been de-emphasized, whether in rodeo, on the great American plains, or on sweaty ballroom dance floors.

Beyoncé is back⁠. ⁠

At the dawn of a new Renaissance, Beyoncé is gearing up for her next evolution, one that reaffirms her unparalleled influence with an audacious ascent to new limits. ”So many things have changed in the past decade,” she says. ⁠ ⁠

Ten years after first covering CR in 2014 and hot on the heels of her act ii and newly-launched hair-care line Cécred, the inimitable global superstar returns to the pages of CR Fashion Book with Carine Roitfeld and JAWARA in honor of her next big move.

Before Beyoncé Knowles-Carter became Beyoncé, she was a young Texas girl sweeping hair in her mother Tina Knowles’s hair salon in Houston. And now she’s returning to her, yes, roots with her latest business venture: her very own hair-care line, Cécred (pronounced sacred).

“In a world where so much of our lives become available to so many people, the word sacred means more and more to me,” Beyoncé tells the Cut. “I believe the things we love the deepest are to be protected. Those moments of taking the time to feed yourself, water yourself, ignite your soul with the things that are real. That’s the energy of this brand.” Back in May 2023, Beyoncé posted a photo to Instagram hinting at this latest project, and for months social media has spectated on what’s coming. The internet, of course, also tried side-eyeing it. But this isn’t just a bunch of products with Beyoncé’s name on it. The science-backed brand has a team including Neal Farinah, Beyoncé’s longtime hairstylist, as lead global stylist; trichologist Dr. Kari Williams as head of education; and former CEO of Milani Cosmetics and Living Proof Grace Ray as CEO. Her mother, Knowles, is vice-chairwoman of the brand.

Beyoncé’s hair has seen it all: bleaching, cutting, heat damage, and more. We’ve seen her don an array of hairstyles and watched her cut all of her hair off and grow it back — an experience she talked about recently in an Essence magazine interview. “It was a very big emotional transformation and metamorphosis that I was going through,” she told the magazine. “So much of my identity as a performer has been connected to flowing hair. Cutting my hair off was me rebelling against being this woman that society thinks I’m supposed to be. I was a new mother, and something about the liberation of becoming a mother made me want to just shed all of that. It was a physical representation of me shedding the expectations put upon me.” Now, with her hair strong, healthy, and lustrous and after years of testing, she’s giving us the tools to do the same, and she wants to provide a product for everyone.

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter wears quite a few hats. She juggles life as a married mother of three with being the greatest living entertainer—two undertakings that are brain- and body-bending separately, and nearly inconceivable when combined. Her pointed manicures are the needle under which global interest spins. One hip bounce, one social post, one brand mention: That’s all it takes to send the public into orbit. She’s mentor, mountain, and muse—every woman and every woman. Over the years she’s launched multiple ventures, including House of Deréon, Parkwood Entertainment, BeyGOOD and IVY PARK. Her latest undertaking has technically been on the burner since her youth—but more tangibly since 2018. It branches from her family’s generational focus on hair, taking root in the idea of self-care as ritual. She first teased the project in May 2023 via Instagram, where fans assumed the sprays and pumps before her were filled with self-made hair elixirs. She, and all involved, have been characteristically mum about the offering—until now.

“Hair has always been a very big part of our lives,” says Ms. Tina Knowles. “Just as fashion saved our family, hair is how we made a living.” In Beyoncé’s formative years, Ms. Tina was a hairdresser who owned and operated her own salon. She says her career in cosmetology is but a continuation of what Black people have done for ages. “In the culture of Black folks, all the way from the beginning: If you could do some hair, you’ll never be broke,” she explains. “I told my kids that. My mama told me that. So it’s just our legacy, and this full-circle moment feels amazing.”

A Sunday evening in Los Angeles; a drive into a discreet set of gates for a candid dinner with Beyoncé.

Two days before I find myself here, at Beyoncé’s home, we had convened in West Hollywood with photographer Rafael Pavarotti to make a fashion story. New music is coming – a thrilling abundance of it, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. In what might be her most ambitious musical project to date, the culture-shifting, Grammy-dominating Queen Bee of all she surveys has trained her considerable artillery on America’s musical soundscape of the late 20th century. Do I need to add there is also a little mystery at play?

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, a writer of excellent and lengthy texts, had taken to messaging me as we brainstormed the direction of her Vogue shoot together. A fashion fantasia spun from the tropes of club life during the last century’s final quarter. Mirror balls, light boxes, headdresses? Of course. A horse on the dance floor? Certainly. A motorcycle for her to adorn in Junya Watanabe leathers and Harris Reed & Roker boots? Why not. B wanted to play with fashion like never before, and as we swapped references (from the 1990s garage scene to ’80s excess), talked hair and beauty, and got to know her team, a vision of glittering retro-futurism began to take shape.

Beyoncé's Evolution

After more than two decades in the spotlight, Beyoncé has become much more than a pop icon. She’s a cultural force who has routinely defied expectations and transformed the way we understand the power of art to change how we see ourselves and each other. But at 40, she feels like she’s just scratched the surface.

Women born at the dawn of the 1980s were among the last generation to live an analog life and the first to see themselves reimagined in digital. Beyoncé’s childhood coincided with the rise of home-recording equipment—video cameras, stereo systems that let you record your own voice, keyboards that let you find whatever sound you wanted, personal computers to synthesize it all. The girls before her had mirrors and the echoes of the trees and magazines with cartoon approximations to reflect themselves. Her generation was the first to regularly experience the dizzying accuracy of playback. It could be a destabilizing force; there’s your voice as you think it sounds, and then your voice when it comes back to you, after you’ve hit Record.

Tracks TV shared an old interview with Beyonce from 2002 in Paris.

Artist, businesswoman, perfectionist – the one woman powerhouse that is Beyoncé talks family, fashion and philanthropy (and bee hives) with Edward Enninful, in British Vogue’s December 2020 cover interview.

It was always going to be special. How could it not be? And yet I’m not sure I could have predicted how having Beyoncé – an icon of music, fashion and culture for more than 20 years – on British Vogue’s cover this month would finally come to pass.

As I logged on to my laptop one evening in early autumn to oversee the 12-hour shoot more than 3,000 miles away, in New York, I felt the thrill of the new. It was the culmination of months of preparation. “It takes enormous patience to rock with me,” Beyoncé Knowles-Carter wryly notes in our interview on the following pages, in a rare and rounded glimpse into her world. But let me tell you this: rocking with Beyoncé is electric.

Our creative discussions began during the early days of lockdown, and an idea quickly took shape. Social justice, a pandemic – it was clear that this was the moment for something extra. As we all know, it has been an extremely tough year for fashion, and so we wanted to create a no- holds-barred celebration. Who, after all, has the ability to elevate and excite like Queen B? And so we approached some of our favourite designers, who each made a custom piece for a 20-page extravaganza with a purpose: to uplift an industry.

British Vogue unveiled Beyoncé as its December 2020 cover star on Friday (Oct. 30) with three jaw-dropping covers.

And in typical Beyoncé fashion, her cover will be one for the books: The photographer, 21-year-old Kennedi Carter, becomes the youngest cover photographer in British Vogue's 104-year history, capturing Bey sporting her latest Ivy Park x Adidas collection as well as a Mugler elastic-nylon mesh bodysuit and an Alexander McQueen evening jacket.

In the interview, conducted by editor-in-chief Edward Enninful, the 39-year-old superstar reveals how the events of 2020 "absolutely changed" her.

"It would be difficult to experience life in a pandemic and the current social unrest and not be changed. I have learnt that my voice is clearer when I am still," she says. "I truly cherish this time with my family, and my new goal is to slow down and shed stressful things from my life. I came into the music industry at 15 years old and grew up with the world watching, and I have put out projects nonstop."

She recalled her "back to back" creative projects over the last four years, starting with her 2016 album Lemonade and ending with her 2020 Disney+ visual album Black Is King.

Beyonce shared a special message on 'Brown Skin Girl' music video with Good Morning America.

In a global ELLE exclusive, Beyoncé answers questions directly from her fans. Read her thoughts on motherhood, finding time for date nights and how she learned to feel “more womanly and secure”.

As she unveils her new adidas partnership for IVY PARK, Beyoncé offers a rare opportunity for fans: full access.

Descending from the sky into a nondescript corner of L.A.’s Crenshaw neighbourhood, parachute in tow, Beyoncé is something of an otherworldly presence. She strides into the local hair salon, bodega, laundromat and wig shop wearing pieces from her IVY PARK x adidas collection—living proof that you, too, can be a stylish superhero in your own life, no matter where you live and who you are. She designs IVY PARK with everyone in mind, emphasizing a “fly” look for all—whether they’re dropping off the kids, going to the gym or out on a dinner date. For ELLE’s shoot, the superstar gamely poses for a series of cinematic vignettes she dreamed up with her Lemonade collaborator, Queen & Slim director Melina Matsoukas.

Watch the rest of Beyonce's interview for the "The Lion King: Can You Feel The Love Tonight with Robin Roberts" ABC special below.

Watch Beyonce's interview for "The Lion King: Can You Feel The Love Tonight with Robin Roberts" special which aired on ABC.

Watch Beyoncé's interview from the Inside WACO's Wearable Art Gala special on OWN TV below.

In an exclusive excerpt from the essay collection QUEEN BEY: A Celebration of Power and Creativity of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, former Billboard deputy editor Isabel González Whitaker recalls her experiences interviewing the singer and the immediate warmth and kinship she felt during their interactions over the years in a piece entitled: "Finding La Reina in Queen Bey."

It wasn’t until the third time that I met Beyoncé that she showed me her superpower.

The first two times, in the late nineties, I just said hello at record industry meet and greets, where Destiny’s Child was working hard to get fans to say their names. The third and fourth times were a decade later, in 2008 and 2011, by which time Beyoncé had reached certified solo status, as an artist and in name, and I interviewed her for cover stories for InStyle magazine, where I worked as an editor.

The first time I sat down with her, I was nervous and new to my job, as well as emotionally fragile, having lost my mother a few weeks prior. Beyoncé was my first true superstar inter- view. I remember exactly what I wore because I gave it tons of thought, as you do when you are going to meet an artist you have long admired. But I was also there to get a job done, so I chose a boxy Maria Cornejo black top paired with a black high- waist wool gabardine Stella McCartney skirt, Lucite wedge heels from United Nude, and one of my mom’s chunky necklaces for good luck. My boss told me I looked chic, which was what I was aiming for. Beyoncé complimented my shoes, which is why I’m sitting here now wondering why I ever got rid of them.

I uploaded some older photos that were missing from our gallery.

Do you remember a world before Beyoncé? The singer has been in our hearts and headphones for more than 20 years, from teenager to mother of three. The Queen graces Vogue’s September issue this year, sharing the story of her latest pregnancy and delivery, her thoughts on body acceptance and the influence of her ancestry, and the legacy she hopes to leave her children. Beyoncé’s fourth Vogue cover is also historic: It was shot by 23-year-old Tyler Mitchell, a rising young black photographer from Atlanta, hand-selected by the star. In this month’s cover slideshow, the Houston native stuns in Louis Vuitton, Valentino, and Gucci.

Melina Matsoukas, a director of music videos and television shows, had just returned home from a trip to Cuba when she got a call from Beyoncé, asking her to direct a video for a song called “Formation.” Matsoukas had directed nine of Beyoncé’s videos, and considered her “family.” But this assignment was unusually demanding. Beyoncé was working on “Lemonade,” a deeply personal “visual album” that touches on betrayals in black marriages—her parents’ and, reportedly, her own. “Formation” would be the first single, and an introduction to Beyoncé’s new aesthetic: both vulnerable and political. She wanted to release the song the day before she performed it at the Super Bowl, which meant that Matsoukas would have to submit a video within a few weeks. “It was the fastest delivery I had ever done in my life,” she told me.

When I visited her loft in Hollywood recently, Matsoukas opened her rose-gold laptop and pulled up the video. The brassy opening beats began as Beyoncé crouched on the roof of a police car, wearing a red-and-white blouse and a matching skirt: evocative of the rural South but made by Gucci. Matsoukas, who is tall and thin, with dark hair and high cheekbones, radiates a disconcerting hyperassurance. (She’s a Buddhist, with a fluctuating practice.) She is, as she says, “very loud and New York,” but her apartment projects an almost hermetic cool: Africanist art, a golden skull on a shelf, a tar-splashed vanity mirror.

After Matsoukas agreed to direct the video, Beyoncé invited her to her house in Los Angeles, and explained the concept behind “Lemonade.” “She wanted to show the historical impact of slavery on black love, and what it has done to the black family,” Matsoukas told me. “And black men and women—how we’re almost socialized not to be together.” This was a fraught subject for Beyoncé. She and her husband, the rapper Jay Z, are among the most famous couples in the world, and they had long been surrounded by rumors that he was unfaithful. Beyoncé considers herself a feminist, but for black women feminism can be a tenuous balancing act—advocating for women’s rights while supporting black men against racism. Black feminists have often been forced to pick between being politically black or politically female. “It’s an unfair struggle that only black women can understand and relate to,” Matsoukas said. With the “Lemonade” album, Beyoncé was publicly calling out the men in her life, an unexpected and, to her fans, thrilling decision.

For sisters in the public eye, Beyoncé and Solange Knowles have managed to resist the siren call to overshare the minutiae of their personal lives. But there is one topic they are happy to gush about: their mother, Tina Knowles Lawson.

In the January issue of Interview magazine, Solange is interviewed by Beyoncé and waxes lyrical about how their mother “always taught us to be in control of our voice and our bodies and our work.” Last June, when accepting the fashion icon award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Beyoncé dedicated it to her “fabulous and beautiful” mother.

And in November, when Solange appeared on “Saturday Night Live,” a backstage video posted on Instagram, showing the singer carried by Mom and Big Sis, caused the internet to let out a collective “aww.”

Ms. Lawson, 63, now finds herself in a newfound role as an artistic bridge between two of 2016’s most critically lauded albums: “Lemonade,” Beyoncé’s fiery visual album that is up for nine nods at the Grammy Awards next month, and “A Seat at the Table,” Solange’s spare and poetic R&B record, which topped Pitchfork’s best-album list last year. In October, her daughters made history when they became the first sisters to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart in the same year.

It's difficult to keep in mind the effort, the control required to make music that feels as graceful and cool as Solange's A Seat at the Table—especially when it's playing anywhere within earshot. All and everyone it touches just seems to groove in its glow. But does that deceptive ease, that seamlessness, on a jam like "Weary," for example, ring somewhat differently when we know it is a Knowles joint? For so long, and perhaps right up until the release of A Seat last September, and because the media can only think in archetypes or binaries, apparently, Solange was often cast in contrast to her big sister, Beyoncé-Solange as the groovy Dionysian hipster to Bey's Apollonian majesty. And, to be fair, while Beyoncé was making perfectly manicured pop marvels, Solange was more apt to drop a funky progressive EP, as she did with the freaky-good True, from 2012. She was, by definition, making popular music—and was then, as she remains, among the more thoughtful and direct songwriters out there—but she certainly sought out the woollier hinterlands of the genre, working with Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor, Mark Ronson, and even Andy Samberg's comedy trio the Lonely Island.

There are some great cameos on A Seat, too (Lil Wayne for the win), but it's the restraint that creates drama throughout the record. Excepting the interludes of mini-monologues from Solange's parents and from Master P (!), the tracks on A Seat, each written and co-produced by Solange, are as tight and polished as cue balls. It seems notable that, in a year full of unparalleled turmoil and tragedy, when sexuality, race, gender, and identity politics were the slowly moving, if molten hot, tectonic plates of American culture, the tenor of A Seat at the Table is one of extraordinary, almost chilly poise. There is a severity in Solange's seeming serenity, as she sings on "F.U.B.U.," for instance, about commercial and cultural appropriation of black culture; there is a rigor to her composure. But that anaerobic tension makes for all the more seductive a re-listen and re-listen and re-listen.