Beyoncé Isn’t Giving Up on America

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The New York Times

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Arts

4.8 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 August 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Wesley went to the final stop of the Cowboy Carter Tour. He talks through what he saw — the genre of it all, and the quietly powerful politics — with Salamishah Tillet, Times contributing critic and the professor behind an entire class about Beyoncé.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Wesley Morris, and this is Cannonball.
0:13.1	We parted in Venus, y'all, and woke up in Mars.
0:30.6	On July 26th, a Saturday, I was in the Las Vegas taxi cab of a distinguished gentleman named Shemar.
0:32.0	He wore wraparound sunglasses and came to the U.S. 25 years ago from Ethiopia, and he expertly drove me to Allegiant Stadium.
0:40.3	And he instantly knew what was up.
0:42.3	Oh, you are here to see the queen.
0:45.3	And I was like, okay, talk to me, Shemir.
0:48.3	Wait, sir, did you just say the queen is in town?
0:51.3	Yeah.
0:52.3	Is she not? I mean, I'm not here to argue with you.
0:57.4	The queen, of course, being Beyonce, Giselle, Knowles Carter.
1:01.4	When I was a kid, I could do Madonna's full name.
1:03.5	It was Madonna, Louise, Veronica, Chaconay Penn.
1:06.0	That's a story for another time.
1:08.2	Anyway, while I was talking to him, I realized this man has been doing some thinking.
1:13.6	She's loved by hundreds of thousands of people.
1:16.9	Uh-huh.
1:17.5	So that's, that's, after all, it's not the authority that gives queenship.
1:23.2	It's the love of the people.
1:25.5	So she's loved.
1:27.1	She deserves it. She deserves it.
1:28.0	She gets it.
	...

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