Beyoncé Dropped Another Album While You Were Sleeping

I didn't really need a full night's rest anyway.

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Today, I woke up at 6:30 in the morning to my alarm as well as a slew of text messages with one word: BEYONCÉ. With haste, I rushed to check Twitter, the only reliable news source around, to discover that Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter, First of Her Name, Mother of Cuties, Singer of Songs, and Your Fave's Fave had dropped a 40-song album to accompany the release of her Netflix documentary Homecoming.

It felt like December 11, 2013 all over again—the day Beyoncé ruined my intense cram session for my linguistics final by dropping her self-titled album. I had things to do! I had places to be! But first, I was going to stream. World stop.

Over the years, the Beyhive has learned to expect the unexpected when it comes to our fave, so we kinda-sorta-maybe saw this coming. We knew about the documentary, and we'd heard whispers about a new album being in the works, so we suspected that the film and B7 would be dropping on the same day. We were right.

Homecoming: The Live Album features the entire Beychella setlist. 40 songs. TWO ENTIRE HOURS OF BEYONCÉ. What did we do in our past lives to deserve this good fortune?

The album also features something extra Black on the already blickity-Black production: a New Orleans bounce remake of the cookout classic "Before I Let Go" by Frankie Beverly and Maze. I've already listened to it 15 times today, thanks for asking!

From beginning to end, Homecoming: The Live Album is a love letter from Beyoncé to the Black culture that made her who she is, a celebration of the extraordinary creativity and power of Black people and our experience. For us, by us.

Homecoming: The Live Album is now available for streaming on every major platform.

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Lagos-born and Houston-raised, Ineye Komonibo is a writer and editor with a love for all things culture. With an academic background in public relations and media theory, Ineye’s focus has always been on using her writing ability to foster discourse about the deep cyclical relationship between society and the media we engage with, ever-curious about who we are and what we do because of what we consume. Most recently, she put her cultural savvy to work as a culture critic for R29 Unbothered, covering everything from politics to social media thirst to the reverberations of colorism across the African diaspora.