Los Angeles, you are blessed. And after what you’ve been through this year, with the wildfires and all, you need the blessings. The Queen of All Culture has blessed you by kicking off the COWBOY CARTER tour in LA and night two featured her generations, one more generation from night one. Which also fits with her work on this album and its accompanying tour – because of course her purpose was to highlight the legacy of Black artistry in country music and beyond.
And here she was on stage, celebrating her own family legacy with the person who shaped her and the two people she’ll be shaping in turn: Blue and Rumi once again joined their mother…but Beyoncé’s mother also came out for her flowers.
This is why I call her STAR GIRL RUMI!!! #COWBOYCARTERTOUR pic.twitter.com/Gf1pukiuwC
— LAMBO ðŸ (@___Taurean___) May 2, 2025
If you couldn’t hear from that video, Beyoncé is congratulating Miss Tina on her book, Matriarch, making it to the top of the NYT bestseller list. Rumi, though, as you can see, is making it her birthday every day, I can’t, she is so cute. And much of this cuteness comes from how much insight we’re getting about Beyoncé and her interiority through Rumi. Beyoncé has long only shown us what she wants to show us. And Blue has also learned how to protect herself by creating distance between her public self and her private self. Rumi, though, is pure kid, and is processing the spectacle for the first time pretty much as organically as possible in that it’s clear she’s not performing here, she’s experiencing…in the safe arms of her mother, sister, and now grandmother. Beyoncé the entertainer is all about precision. At home, as observed through her youngest child, is where the spontaneity thrives – a necessary balance to the control she maintains when she’s in the presence of her public.
Can I just cry right now though, not just about this wholesome family tableau but over the show itself and how mad with jealousy I am not to have been there? Night one was already an acclaimed showcase of Beyoncé’s singular status as an artist. And then she comes out for night two and changes the set list – not taking anything away but moving around the song order and adding several songs, bringing the total to 40, including a f-cking run that goes from “Crazy In Love” to “Single Ladies” to “Love on Top” to “Irreplaceable” to a version of “If I Were a Boy” that melded with “Jolene”…
I CAN’T.
Like on a production level, think about the now famous “NOTES” she gives after every show. After crushing it out there for three hours, she’s known to be sending in suggested (read: demanded) improvements and tweaks, but making adjustments this significant after night one, with just two full days in between – we need the documentary because I’m dying to know if this was always the plan or if she’s actually intending to shake it up every night or maybe every eight nights as another level of tribute to the Chitlin’ Circuit.
🚨BEYONCÉ WILL *LIKELY* HAVE A DIFFERENT SET EACH SHOW FOR THE TOUR, ICONICðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ pic.twitter.com/JeoK8iSAfA
— ð—±ð—®ð—»ð—»ð˜†ðŸ«§ðŸ’š (@beyoncegarden) May 2, 2025
If that indeed turns out to be the case, it’s another example of the layers of Beyoncé’s intention.
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