Beyoncé has been doing quite a bit of post-release editing on her Renaissance: act 1 album, and this time around, the Houston songstress seems to have acted on the backlash she received from Kelis.
Did Beyoncé remove Kelis credit from ‘Energy’?
Queen Bey’s ‘stans’ who’ve been tracking developments around the spat between two musical powerhouses, noticed a change in the credits for Energy, one of the songs on Renaissance that have been at the centre of controversy.
You will remember that recently, Kelis went on social media to blast the Break My Soul songstress for not having the decency to inform her that her classic hit single Milkshake would be interpolated into one of her songs.
Not only was Kelis not duly informed of the sampling, but she only received a performer’s credit on the song — as seen in the tweet below — despite the fact that Milkshake was solely written by her, albeit it was Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo who received the writer’s recognition.
To this day, Beyoncé has made no public statements in response to Kelis. However, social media ‘sherlocks’ noticed that on the album credits found on her website, Kelis’ name no longer appears under Energy. We went to check ourselves, and, low and behold, Kelis’ name, as well as The Neptunes duo, no longer exists.
If, indeed, Beyoncé did, in fact, remove Kelis, and this is not a technical glitch, then it would be the second time she’s applied edits to Renaissance post-release.
Earlier in the week, Jay-Z’s wife was forced to remove an ableist slur from one of her songs, following in the footsteps of Lizzo, who caught flak online for using the word “spaz” on her June 2022 hit single GRRRLS.