Context Collapse and the Ethics of Queer Sampling in Beyoncé’s Renaissance

Using Beyoncé’s queer sampling of Big Freedia and other Black queer and trans artists on her album Renaissance (2022) as a case study, this talk seeks to complicate our understanding of the ethics of contemporary sampling practices. The album extensively engages with what we might call queer sampling – the sampling of musical work by queer and trans artists or sonic references associated with LGBTQ music cultures in order to create a musical experience that sounds queer. This talk argues that queer sampling in this album situates Black queer and trans artists (and listeners) as central to the project and to Black music practices while simultaneously creating a context collapse in which queer experiences are folded into other minoritized experiences. This use of queer sampling also occurs in lieu of more direct collaboration with Black queer artists that, while entirely legal and somewhat beneficial to queer artists, nevertheless contributes to this context collapse and a lack of visibility and artistic control for those artists. More information about this event can be found here.