Beyoncé's country 'Renaissance' features Nashville ties with composers, vocals

With all due respect to the Kansas City Chiefs, alongside Taylor Swift, Beyoncé won Super Bowl 58.

The 32-time Grammy winner announced that she will release "Act II" of her "Renaissance" project on Mar. 29, and it will involve country music. Thus, an album teased 18 months ago and believed to feature "country-leaning tracks" is now a reality.

Of course, if it's a country album, Nashville artists — and artists for whom Music City is a perpetual inspiration — are involved.

Here are a few of the standouts.

Rhiannon Giddens

Given Beyoncé's reverence for music history in general, one listen to the banjo-laden dance track "Texas Hold 'Em" points to an obvious collaborator.

Rhiannon Giddens (who also contributes viola on the track) is a Macarthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer whose work reclaims the banjo's African and West African origins. Our Native Daughters — a supergroup of her with Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla and Allison Russell that she curated and produced, yielded a critically acclaimed Smithsonian Folkways Recordings album.

Giddens and her partner, Francesco Turrisi, contributed the original score to Caroline Randall Williams' "Lucy Negro Redux," a ballet based on a book of poetry by Williams that reads Shakespeare's "dark lady" sonnets as written to a Black woman.

Keen on blues, Cajun, country, gospel, jazz and rock, her Grammy-winning work has been with artists including songster Dom Flemons, multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins, hip-hop beat-boxer Adam Matta, plus McCalla, Justin Robinson and Súle Greg Wilson on instruments encompassing the banjo, bodhrán, bones, fiddle jug, guitar, tambourine, ukulele and washboard.

As noted in a 2023 review of a performance at the Ryman Auditorium, Giddens is in a season of her life when playing "all of the American music there is" creates moments "beyond her wildest dreams."

Atia 'Ink' Boggs

Grammy-nominated American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer (and "16 Carriages" co-writer) Atia "Ink" Boggs has worked with soulful Black artists currently with interests in Nashville's mainstream country scene, including Leon Bridges, K. Michelle and Monica.

The Columbus, Georgia, native is a featured songwriter on "Renaissance: Act I" tracks "Alien Superstar," "Summer Renaissance" and "Thique."

As a guest vocalist on Bridges' "Gold-Diggers Sound," Boggs aids the soulful rocker's desire to highlight "blues and gospel roots connected to deeper African ancestry," the New York Times noted.

Nathan Ferraro

Toronto-born producer Nathan Ferraro is a veteran globetrotter who has become a semi-fixture of Music City through multiple musical affiliations over the past five years.

Already a collaborator with Lady Gaga and Carly Rae Jepsen, the former rock vocalist (the Midway State) is in the same Hyvetown Music song rights representation collective as multi-platinum rock band Hinder, fellow rock-to-country crossover and Big Loud producer Joey Moi (Nickelback, Florida Georgia Line, Morgan Wallen) and one-time Queen lead singer Paul Rodgers.

Robert Randolph

Orange, New Jersey-born pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph is a key contributor to the soulful power of "16 Carriages."

The Grammy-nominated Americana, blues, country, gospel, soul and rock favorite whose work as both an artist (with his Family Band) and as a session musician (with a laundry list of multi-genre Hall of Famers) is peerless.

"Robert is incredible. He's inspirational to watch. He has great ears and takes everything in. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when he checks out Hendrix and Coltrane and Bob Marley and starts getting into more secular, spiritual music," said John Medeski, of experimental jazz fusion act Medeski, Martin and Wood, to the New York Times in 2001.

Two decades later, he was onstage during CMT's 2021 Giants tribute to Charley Pride. He's as familiar with the work of the Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan as he is Jimi Hendrix and rocking the stage at Bonnaroo.

In 2022, Randolph and the Family Band opened for "Chicken Fried" country favorites the Zac Brown Band.

Justin Schipper

Nashville-based Justin Schipper is also a featured pedal steel performer on "16 Carriages."

The five-time Academy of Country Music Award-nominated musician's generation of Music City experience has seen him work both in the studio and onstage with Shania Twain, including her 2014 "Still The One" Las Vegas residency.

For two decades, musicians including Chris Stapleton, Little Big Town, Josh Turner and Carrie Underwood have looked to Schipper as a foundational piece of executing their takes on country songcraft.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Super Bowl: Beyoncé's country 'Renaissance' includes Nashville ties