Beyoncé accepts the Best Country Album award for "COWBOY CARTER" onstage during the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards at Crypto.com Arena on February 02, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Subscribe To
OUT MAGAZINE
OUT MAGAZINE
Subscribe To
OUT MAGAZINE
OUT MAGAZINE
I once heard a joke that every gay man is assigned at least one diva to whom he will be tethered for life. Once tethered, he will waste no opportunity to explain her importance, recreate her signature dance moves, or show her best performances and videos. These stans' fervor — the Beyhive and Little Monsters, to name just a few — was on full display during Sunday's Grammys telecast.
During the Grammys, much attention was paid to whether Beyoncé would win Album of the Year for her country-tinged, hip-hop, soul-honed album Cowboy Carter after previously losing the award for a stream of monumental, norm-defying releases. After her industry-changing self-titled album, her blistering exegesis of her marriage in Lemonade, and her revelry at the discotheque on Renaissance, she finally won.
In many ways, the show's outcome was unimportant. Because of Beyoncé, boys like me, especially a Black gay boy growing up in a devout Christian household in Atlanta, have been able to live a little more fully, with or without the world's celebration.
The soundtrack of my youth was filled with the testimonies and wails of Black divas. I can hear my mother singing along to Aretha and Patti. I knew the lyrics and the wails to "Ain't No Way" and "Somebody Loves You Baby" just as well as or better than I learned nursery rhymes. My father owned Whitney's I'm Your Baby Tonight and Janet's Rhythm Nation 1814 on cassette, which were eventually unspooled and unlistenable from overuse. My maternal grandfather apparently loved his wife, kids, and Diana Ross.
Trending stories
The first album I ever bought was TLC's CrazySexyCool, a far too mature album for a young boy. In the group's heyday, my sister, her friends, and I would each assume one of the member's identities, but I was always Chilli. When alone, I'd don a towel or t-shirt draped over my head to resemble her tresses. This was followed by Brandy's Never Say Never, a much more age-appropriate artist with enviable hair.
Neither of these groundbreaking albums was nominated for Album of the Year. Yet, you'll constantly see them listed as two of the most impactful R&B albums of all time.
I became enthralled with Mariah Carey's magnum opus, Butterfly, around that time. Its themes of feeling ostracized, love won and lost, newfound freedom, and emerging sensuality appealed to my 10-year-old self. It still does. She'd continue to mine these themes, perhaps most successfully, with The Emancipation of Mimi. It, too, was the biggest album of its day.
And it, too, did not win Album of the Year.
The latter album coincided with my senior year of high school and my first year of college at Yale University. This was the first time I was on my own when I could finally create myself into the person I always imagined myself to be. Many years later, I would meet Mariah, more radiant than I imagined, on one cold winter evening at an album release event where she told me my hands were warm and soft. Some dreams do come true, you see.
And then there was Beyoncé.
I was instantly entranced when I first saw the Destiny's Child video "No, No, No, Part 2." It's a fun and breezy song about young love sung by four beautiful and talented young Black women. To me, there was more at play. As teenagers, they were glamorous yet relatable, very Black and Southern but also all-American, adolescent but already worldly. I found the lyrics, which some might call young and dreamy. By then, I had already had several crushes on boys at school, shared a clandestine kiss, and imagined relationships to come. The lyrics about appealing to a boy not keen to requite, at least publicly, already spoke to me.
During the summer after my freshman year, one of my best friends hosted a birthday party, a first for me as my parents' faith forbade celebrating birthdays. I wore very fitted white jeans, a blue Polo, earrings in my newly pierced ears, and curls in the hair I had finally started to grow. Beyoncé had just released the single "Deja Vu," an amalgamation of jazzy horns, a strutting bassline, and a hot hi-hat. It was a feverish and celebratory song about an all-consuming love. In the video, Beyoncé performed a free-style dance routine across the bayou and landscapes of New Orleans that would draw the ire of people for inscrutable reasons beyond her being Black and free.
Little did we know this foreshadowed the critiques to come.
I performed an even more liberating version of this dance at my birthday party. I also met the man I would date in secret on and off for the next decade. Also young and Black, he'd go on to break and unbreak my heart many times. Fortunately, I had years of preparation for heartbreak and was ready to put my training to use.
The years have sharpenedBeyoncé. Long gone is the young girl pining for a boy's attention. Here stood a woman with a specific vision of heritage, belonging, and respect that defiantly centers on gay people, women, and transpeople, a transition that has deeply enriched her art. The adulation followed: one of the best-selling artists of all time, the most wins for an artist at the Grammys, creator of some of the most important and impactful albums in music history, and, as some say, the logical end point of a century-plus of pop.
Yet, the brilliance of her artistry and essence, and that of her sisters in song, have not shielded them from the indignities and abuse of a world not meant to cultivate and honor their voices. A reality all too familiar.
One of the most beloved R&B male vocalists of all time, Luther Vandross, went many years without industry honors, losing Grammy after Grammy. One idea filmmaker Dawn Porter grapples with in a new documentary on the late singer is what Luther's life might have looked like if he had been free to be whoever he truly wanted to be and allowed to love publicly whomever he desired.
Much like me, Luther had studied the songbooks of the great divas of his day. But unlike me, he also wrote and produced for them, sang with them, and laughed with them. He duetted with them about seismic romantic loves while often lacking that love in his own life. Luther outfitted himself in the most elegant clothes while struggling with a disobedient body and emitting grace in a world that cared little for Black bodies. By the film's end, hard questions linger: What would his life have looked like if he could live as unabashedly as his sisters in song? What would his life have been if he were truly appreciated for all his gifts? Had the world's inability to love him in his fullness broken his heart beyond repair? However he viewed his sexual orientation is beside the point. He knew the rumor, if allowed to grow unchecked, could be career-ending and life-ruining, and he governed himself accordingly.
I think Luther would have been ecstatic for Beyoncé's win. It is long deserved and, simultaneously, doesn't quite capture her meaning to many of us.
Perhaps I'm imagining this psychic connection, willing a psychic bond between diva and don because the world has afforded few real-life Black gay male alternatives. But, for a young Black kid, this connection is a means of survival in a hostile world. A 2024 survey by The Trevor Project shows nearly a third (32%) of Black cisgender LGBQ young people reported having seriously considered suicide in the past year, compared to just over half (51%) of Black transgender, nonbinary, or questioning young people.
The federal and state governments are attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiativeson every front. The Pentagon paused Black History Month, Juneteenth, and Pride Month celebrations, intersecting marginalized identities. This growing assault on DEI,book bans, and disparagement and removal of our histories from school courses is more proof of how hostile the world continues to be to many of us.
But, still, we live.
The irony iswe have long known we cannot rely on government and societal systems to affirm our worthiness. Despite lacking ample real examples, our ability to imagine ourselves free and loved has been honed over generations, often conjured through song. And, sometimes, even if only for one night, a party, a performance, a kiss, we will our imagination into reality.
Donté Donald is a writer and communications strategist based in Atlanta, Georgia, and New York City.
Voices is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit out.com/submit to learn more about submission guidelines. We welcome your thoughts and feedback on any of our stories. Email us at voices@equalpride.com. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists and editors, and do not directly represent the views of Out or our parent company, equalpride.
Recommended Stories for You
Latest Stories
TERFs are totally missing the point of Sam Rockwell's 'White Lotus' monologue