Beyoncé Launches Her ‘Cowboy Carter’ Tour in L.A., Reasserts Herself (Once Again) As Our Greatest Living Performer

The Blue Ivy Show: In the years since the Renaissance Tour, Beyoncé’s eldest daughter has graduated from adorable show-stopping cameo to full-on member of the ensemble. If there’s a dancers union, then she probably technically has to be paid a salary at this point. But the novelty of seeing Beyoncé bust a move alongside her preteen clone has hardly worn off, and there were two notable points where Blue broke out on her own to show off and show out: the clip going around already is from early in the show during “America Has a Problem,” but the even iller moment came towards the end, when she strutted out to one of her parents’ very first (kind of underrated?) collabs, “Deja Vu,” looking every bit their spitting image.

Last summer, Beyoncé told me it was somewhat inevitable that Blue and her siblings would get bitten by the performer bug, but she was still hesitant to indulge it. “My kids come with me everywhere I go. They come to my office after school, and they are in the studio with me. They are in dance rehearsals. It’s natural that they would learn my choreography. Blue is an artist. She has great taste in music and fashion. She is a fantastic editor, painter, and actress. She has been creating characters since she was three. She’s a natural, but I did not want Blue onstage. Blue wanted it for herself. She took it seriously and she earned it. And most importantly, she had fun! We all watched her grow more and more every night before our eyes.” Now she’s grown almost as tall as Beyoncé herself.

Meanwhile Blue’s younger sister is now old enough to provide a quick, cute cameo, which she did during “Protector,” the Cowboy Carter lullaby that she tees her mom up for on the album. Will she be a mainstay? Hard to tell, but the only thing cooler than watching Bey lock in for three hours with nary a misstep or missed note is seeing her break poise for a split second when Rumi gave her an impromptu hug before leaving the stage.

Renaissance Is a Classic: Every song from that album hit like crack and the Stans in the stands went full Hamsterdam. I still can’t believe I didn’t go to that tour, man. (It might be top two and not two, but maybe that’s a conversation for another day.)

A Beyoncé B-Sides Show Would Go Crazy: There are only a few moments in contemporary music that I wish I was outside a little earlier for; Beyoncé already being arena-level but choosing to support her album 4 with intimate shows in venues like Roseland Ballroom is one of them. Will she ever downsize like that again? Probably not, but consider: she put forth 41 (forty-one) songs last night and I could name a dozen more classics I would’ve loved to see. At one point she trolled the audience by pretending to launch into “Suga Mama,” acknowledging the Beyhive’s very viral desire to see that song make the cut. I appreciate that she’s too committed to do the whole, Oldie-But-Goodie medley a lot of A-listers are doing now, a bit I’m getting tired of where older songs the performer clearly has no interest in gets some dutiful airtime just to titillate the crowd. But imagine a show where she actually does run “Suga Mama” and other random heaters like, “Kitty Kat,” “Speechless,” “Dance For You,” “Heard About Us”… the list goes on.