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Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter has done it again. Monday, April 28th, 2025 marked
the opening of the Cowboy Carter Act II Rodeo Chitlin Circuit Tour at SoFi Stadium. Yes,
that’s a mouthful to say, and at nearly 43 years old, Mrs. Carter has constructed her
greatest tour ever!
This feels crazy to say as someone who has been a lifelong fan and has attended both
her Coachella set and iconic DeyDay show for the Renaissance, where Diana Ross
sang Happy Birthday to her!
A cultural architect and archivist, Beyonce’s work in the last 9 years has paid tribute to
her ancestry as well as uplifting Pan-Africanism, honoring both the ancestors who
survived or perished during slavery and showing the beauty of the continent as it exists
today. We’ve seen Bey uplift HBCU culture during her Coachella run, and the journey to
reconstruction and beyond post-slavery in her Lemonade film as a companion to the
Lemonade album. She paid tribute to her uncle Johnny with the Renaissance album
and show. Cowboy Carter is the continuation of Beyoncé honoring her lineage as well
as critiquing the racist double standards of America.
All that being said and witnessed, this will be the career-defining, legacy-cementing tour
of her life. Her children are peppered all over the show, from live choreography to clips
of the Carter family life shown on screen. The show includes theatrics and acrobatics.
At one point, Beyonce flicks a propped cigarette onto the onstage piano and it lights on
fire!) She flies across the stadium twice in both a horseshoe and a vintage Cadillac and
rides a gold chrome mechanical bull during her sultry R&B song, “Tyrant”).
She’s been doing tours so long that she can pay tribute to her earlier ones as a solo act
as well as a nod to the Renaissance, which was later revealed to originally be act II so
when she took us back to the Renaissance toward the last half of the show, it reminded
us that the sequence in her mind was always, Cowboy Carter (a revenge album for the
shade she received at the CMAs), Renaissance and the yet-to-be-announced Act III
album, that the BeyHive strongly anticipates will be a rock and blues fused album.
Giselle, as her most loyal fans call her, truly gave us the best of all her tricks – vocals,
playful trolling, petty shenanigans, high-energy choreo, and the fastest costume
changes you’ve ever seen. At nearly 3 hours long, you will come out of the show in a
daze, thinking, “What did I just watch?” and with so much going on, it’s hard to focus on
one specific thing to watch. You’re dancing, you’re looking at her, you’re looking for Blue
Ivy, you’re doing your best to catch the symbolism in her on-screen visual interludes,
but it’s impossible to catch it all. And that’s by design! She wants you to come back
again and again and have the time of your life.
This may not be Texas, but it’s a scorchin’ hot rodeo show from beginning to end with a
wink and a nod to the renaissance that started it all. She’s a cowboy, a queen, a mother,
and a legend, and the scariest thing is, she’s not even done. Just like the Renaissance
Tour, she performs the Cowboy Carter Tracklist almost in its entirety.
This show is for the people who rode with her since the backlash of 2016’s Daddy
Lessons. It’s for the folks who have loved her since Destiny’s Child. A searing criticism
of America, whiteness, and systemic gatekeeping kicks off with American Requiem and
a pledge to keep choosing the side of humanity with the closing song, “Amen.”
At nearly 43, she’s comin’ back for you, so get ready for her rodeo and her do-si-do.
