Beyoncé has marked her birthday with a fully remastered, expanded 20th anniversary edition of her iconic second studio album B’Day.
Released on September 4, 2006, the ambitious project was recorded in just two weeks with a then-25-year-old Beyoncé at the helm.
The collection included two guest appearances from her then-boyfriend JAY-Z; while the deluxe and international editions featured Bun B of UGK, Slim Thug, Shakira, and Alejandro Fernández.
In the lead up to her birthday on July 4, the Single Ladies hitmaker released Morning Dew (Donk), which was leaked in 2003. A month later, a JAY-Z remix landed.
The new expanded editions boast a series of Spanish-language tracks. Beyoncé teams up with Colombian superstar Maluma on Cuerpo Tumbao (Get Me Bodied), sampling Celia Cruz’s La Negra Tiene Tumbao in a tribute to Cruz’s pride and defiance. She also delivers Irreemplazable (Como La Flor) featuring Selena – a rare approval from the late singer’s estate and a symbolic duet between two Texas icons who broke barriers in their genres.
On top of the audio delights, Beyoncé has had the original 35mm videos remastered and re-coloured in 4K, including the Sophie Muller-directed Déjà Vu with JAY-Z, out now.
Fans also get never-seen photos shot in New Orleans during the city’s post-Katrina rebuild – a place Beyoncé has deep family roots and wanted to honour.
She says she wanted the album “big, percussive, hard, up-tempo, and energised”, “preserving the bridges, melodies, and harmonies that have always been at the heart of R’n’B.”
Beyoncé recalled: “I wanted the album to be big, percussive, hard, up-tempo, and energised,?and it was important to me that we used live instrumentation.
“Hip-hop was taking over at the time, but I was fighting to preserve the bridges, melodies, and harmonies that have always been at the heart of R’n’B. The goal was to blend those two worlds through the art of sampling. I loved the minimalism of a beautiful vocal arrangement over a simple drum loop or a classic guitar like ‘Irreplaceable’…but only if that 808 was banging underneath.”
Fans can collect the Deluxe Vinyl: a 4LP Bayou Blue edition with a 60-page booklet, art prints and previously unreleased tracks including Can I Watch You with Pharrell and My First Time, originally cut from Dangerously in Love. B-sides Lost Yo Mind, Creole and Back Up also return.
The anniversary edition arrives in multiple formats – standard and deluxe vinyl, CD and a digital deluxe with 31 tracks.
