I’m Just Here to Talk About Beyoncé’s Black Ass Beychella

I told myself I wasn’t gonna do it. I’m washed and I was finna be in bed, scarf on, knocked out. But sure e-fucking-nough, come 1:20 am CT, I was wide awake and flipping my shit because the screen went black and Beyoncé WAS COMING!! Beyoncé, why? Why’d you have to do me like that? Like I knew to expect greatness but I still wasn’t ready. Beyoncé put Coachella and the rest of us on notice a year ago when she postponed her First Black Woman to Headline Coachella status for maternity leave. And in that year off, she planned a hell of a fucking show.

The woman who shaded the Country Music Awards by inviting the Dixie Chicks to perform with her gave one of the Blackest sets at one of America’s whitest music festivals. In the middle of the night, Queen Bey drop-kicked me out of the comfort of my New Orleans bed and back through time to a warm April Friday on The Yard at Howard University. If I closed my eyes I could almost hear the Qs hopping over at the sundial. Bless. Beyoncé’s Coachella army, decked out in epauletted yellow sweatshirts with the Beyoncé royal crest (Beta Delta Kappa), featured female and male dancers, a choir, Beyoncé’s regular band Suga Mama, a Vanta Black all-star HBCU marching band, an all-Black woman string section, Les Twins, Solange, Michelle Williams, Kelly Rowland, five costume changes, several live stream camera operators, one HELL of a sound technician, and JAY Z. We got a formal opening with The Black National Anthem leading straight into Formation (w…