Image: EAST RUTHERFORD, NEW JERSEY - JULY 30: (Editorial Use Only) (Exclusive Coverage) Beyoncé performs onstage during the "RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR" at MetLife Stadium on July 30, 2023 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Parkwood )

As expected, Beyoncé has announced her latest world tour in connection with her stellar and multiply Grammy-nominated 2022 album Renaissance, and she will be swinging through the Bay Area on August 30.

The Renaissance Tour, which kicks off in May in Stockholm, is Beyoncé's first solo tour since 2016, and tickets are no doubt going to be in high demand. As the New York Times explains it, "Limited tickets for certain tour dates will go on sale beginning Monday for members of Beyoncé’s BeyHive fan club, followed by the staggered release of additional tickets by market, using a complex registration system for various tiers of buyer."

Sales for the tour will be done through Ticketmaster's Verified Fan system, which aims to limit ticket grabs by scalpers and bots, though this will be the first major test of whether the system actually works since the recent Taylor Swift meltdown. The Verified Fan system will essentially function like a lottery, shuffling some people onto a waitlist for tickets while others will be granted an access code to buy right away.

This is the first time Beyoncé is out performing new material since 2016's Formation Tour, which also made stops at Levi's Stadium. Local demand for Bey was high enough back then that a second tour date was added at Levi's — she performed the same show there in May and again in September 2016. She came back in 2018 on the On the Run II Tour with husband Jay-Z.

This tour schedule is pretty packed already, but so far there are no double dates announced for any US cities — and there is wiggle room, it looks like, to add a second date at Levi's before or after August 30, with an earlier show four days before in Las Vegas, and the next date three days later in L.A.

Beyoncé has said that Renaissance, which was released to immediate acclaim last summer, is Act One of a three-act project that she conceived during the pandemic. Critics and fans have noted that the album represents Beyoncé at her most relaxed and whimsical, and it's the first time that her music has so directly embraced Black queer culture and dance music.

She says, "My intention was to create a safe place, a place without judgment. A place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking. A place to scream, release, feel freedom."

More recently, Beyoncé faced some fan backlash last month for performing at the opening of a luxury hotel in Dubai — for which she was reportedly paid $24 million, per BuzzFeed, and she didn't do any material from Renaissance. Given the United Arab Emirates' strict laws criminalizing homosexuality, many fans felt it was problematic that Beyoncé would accept their invitation (or their money), especially after putting out this album.

As writer Douglas Greenwood put it, "No beef but I’m struggling to understand why Beyoncé, who has half a billion dollars, would accept 20 million dollars to make her debut performance of the Renaissance album, a record which lifts heavily from queer culture, in Dubai, a country where LGBT rights aren’t recognised. I get it, everyone wants their coin, but when you’re THAT rich, is it THAT worth it?"

Other fans have pointed out that LGBTQ fans living under oppressive governments shouldn't be punished for their governments' stances — and Lady Gaga has performed multiple times in Dubai, and she is even more vocal in her support of her LGBTQ fans.

Top image: Beyoncé at Atlantis The Royal on January 21, 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Atlantis The Royal)

Beyoncé and Jay-Z came to Oakland for Game 3 of the NBA Finals last night, and a side-eye moment that may have been taken out of context led to a meme and a social media mob situation.

Just to back up, Queen Bey and Jay were invited to the game Wednesday night as guests of Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob and his wife Nicole Curran. Curran was seated next to Beyoncé, who was in between Curran and Jay-Z. And TV cameras caught a moment where Curran leaned across Beyoncé to say something to Jay-Z, and Beyoncé looked mildly annoyed. There is apparently a bit of side-eye, and it's unclear if something Curran said rubbed her the wrong way, or she didn't appreciate the leaning, or what. Regardless, it shouldn't have been a big deal, but the internet has a way of blowing things up.

Curran says she was flooded with death threats overnight, and people telling her to kill herself, and that was all before TMZ picked up the story at 6 a.m. today.

She attempted to calm the storm by addressing the Beyhive directly on Instagram, but that apparently didn't work, and Curran has since disabled her Insta. "I respect Queen B. I love her!" Curran wrote. "All of this has been taken out of context. I am a happily married woman."

Beyoncé hasn't commented on the incident and she likely won't — this is the last thing she posted on Instagram, Wednesday night in the Bay Area, somewhere.

The incident definitely reeks of some problematic, gendered sensationalism — yes, everyone keeps a super-close eye on Beyoncé and we all know she's got a jealousy thing going on, but is it really necessary to create drama out of nothing just because two wealthy women are involved? Even the usually more pro-woman Jezebel posted a piece in which a writer dove into Curran's Instagram before she shut it off, taking note of her photo-taking habits in frivolous fashion. "From what I can tell, Nicole Curran is an exceedingly rich woman married to a Bay Area power broker who loves posting photos of her expensive shoes. In bed! I’d comment on the sanitary concerns, but I think we can agree she probably doesn’t step outside much in these," the writer says regarding a photo that is no longer online.

As one Twitterer who has probably also attracted the wrath of the Beyhive put it, "When Beyoncé acts like a bitch to the warriors owners wife it’s 'that’s queen B, omg she’s so fearless!' But if Kanye does anything like that it’s 'hes an asshole with a napoleon complex.' Which is it?"

Los Gatos-based Netflix may have some more Beyoncé movies coming out, as we now learn that the Homecoming documentary of her 2018 Coachella performance was just the beginning of a three-project deal.

Variety reported Monday that Netflix inked a Chappelle-sized deal with Queen Bey, and Homecoming is the first of three upcoming specials. She is reportedly being paid $20 million for each of the specials, for a total payday of $60 million.

Netflix declined to comment on the report, and disputed the financial terms of the deal in speaking to Variety. But as Vulture reports, HBO was ready to sign a deal with Beyoncé after previously airing her Lemonade film and a concert film of her On the Run tour in 2014, and Netflix stepped in with a higher bid.

Netflix has been making a habit of releasing high-profile concert films and music documentaries after last year's Springsteen on Broadway, and Lady Gaga’s Gaga: Five Foot Two.

Dave Chappelle was reportedly paid $60 million for his trio of comedy specials in 2017, and Springsteen was paid $20 million for the rights to his hit Broadway memoir. Chris Rock was also reportedly paid a whopping $40 million for his Netflix special.

In related news, Netflix has recently said it will begin sharing more viewership data with content producers, and presumably the public. Previously the company had held fast to the idea that sharing ratings was detrimental and put undue pressure on productions.

Chappelle's first comeback special, Dave Chappelle: Collection 1, is Netflix's most-watched comedy special ever — or at least it was in April 2017 when the company reported that fact to its shareholders.

Photo: Ronald Woan

There aren't a lot of performers who can get up on a stage in front of 44,000, declare "I'm a star" and "I slay" and have not a single person try to say otherwise. Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter is one of those performers, and with her Formation World Tour she has reached a new pinnacle in both her self-assurance and her popularity — while at the same time admitting some human defeat, and disappointment, with the personal songs at the heart of her new album Lemonade that suggest all is not well in the House of Carter.

Beyoncé has not significantly altered the set list on the tour since it kicked off in Miami on April 27, but opening with "Formation" had some special significance for the audience at Levi's Stadium Monday, what with all that tension around her Black Panthers-inspired performance at the Super Bowl three months ago — and her dancers showing solidarity with protesters of the police shooting of Mario Woods, and the video's reference to the Black Lives Matter movement. Taking the defiant, New Orleans-inflected number that Saturday Night Live satirically suggested was the first truly Black thing the pop singer has done, and putting it out in front of this otherwise pretty personal cycle of songs — not to mention naming the tour for it — shows that she wants to be seen as entering a new phase in her own formation as a performer. No longer "Drunk in Love," and no longer a single lady, but certainly not willing to suffer at the hands of others or accept defeat for long.

The production is as dazzling as everyone has come to expect from Beyoncé, complete with an all-female backup dance crew who march in formation alongside their queen down a long, L-shaped runway that extends out from the main stage. But this one, along with the heavier subject matter in new songs like "Sorry" and "Hold Up," brings real weight with it, starting with the monolithic, 60-foot LED cube that slowly rotates at the center of the stage and morphs into various set pieces, or cracks open to reveal an aerialist spinning and slowly descending behind the dancers.

"Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" was actually dropped from the set list since the tour began, a week after the death of Prince, and it's been replaced with a wrenching rendition of Prince's "The Beautiful Ones," with Beyoncé kneeling on the stage, alone. This segues into a recording of "Purple Rain" that plays with just a purple glow on the LEDs while a costume change happens, and thousands of fans in the stadium stands responded lighting up their cellphone flashlights, in loving memory.

Photo: Jay Barmann/SFist

The show Monday night was at times as raw and real as some moments on Lemonade, as Beyoncé the diva allowed herself to be just Beyoncé Knowles-Carter the woman — especially during the Prince cover, and as she came out for a final group of songs that began with "Freedom," following a video montage of never-before-seen intimate home movies of herself with Jay-Z and Blue Ivy. And at no point does the strength or clarity of her voice falter, despite two long hours of strenuous dancing and belting.

The final group of songs, which also pointedly included Destiny's Child hit "Survivor," gets done as a kind of baptism as the entire front section of L-shaped runway gets magically flooded with a couple inches of water. Beyoncé and her dancer platoon march out barefoot this time and splash themselves, security guards, and the audience as they stomp and spin through this elemental final spectacle. Yes, there are a few fireworks and flames shot up above the stage at other points, and that LED monolith is impressive. But it's this final, joyous gesture that leaves the star herself drenched and laughing that perfectly caps off what will easily go down as a key turning point in Beyoncé's career. She's giving a lot of herself — everything she has, maybe — to keep earning the respect of her millions of fans, fellow divas included, and no one can walk away from a show like that believing they've seen anything less than royalty.

Look for a repeat performance, perhaps with some of the tweaks that come with a few more months on the road, when she returns to fill Levi's again on September 17.

Photo: Brian Higby

Photo: Jay Barmann/SFist

Having sold out her May 16 show at Levi's Stadium on her Formation World Tour, Beyoncé has just announced that she'll be swinging back through the Bay Area for a second date on September 17, just in case you missed your ticket-buying opportunity, or in case you need to see her twice. Those tickets go on sale next Friday, May 13, at 10 a.m., and will range from $45 to $305, per the Chron.

Tickets for the May show went on sale in February and as of a couple weeks ago there were still some available. But then Lemonade dropped, and clearly those went fast.

And if you, like everyone else, was wondering how New Orleans could have been left off the initial tour schedule, given the city's prominence in Lemonade and the song "Formation," there must have just been a logistical issue, because it's on there now. A New Orleans show is now set for the Mercedes Benz Superdome on September 24.

As Billboard reports:

Formation is emerging as one of the biggest tours of 2016, and appears headed toward a total Boxscore that will top $200 million, Billboard estimates. Beyonce has developed into one of the elite touring acts in the world. Her Mrs. Carter World Tour of 2013-2014 grossed $212 million from attendance of nearly 2 million to 126 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore. Following that tour, Beyonce embarked on the On The Run co-headlining stadium run with her husband, Jay Z, which grossed $96 million, from 832,769 tickets sold to just 19 shows in North America.

Meanwhile, not everyone is a huge fan...

Previously: Reminder: Beyoncé Plays Levi's Stadium May 16, And There Are Still Tickets

As the rave reviews and gushing Facebook posts continue to pour in over Beyoncé's new album Lemonade — which, by the way, just arrived on iTunes last night at midnight because, ahem, Tidal sucks — this is just a public service announcement to remind Bay Area Bey fans that she'll be making a return to Levi's Stadium on her Formation World Tour on Monday, May 16, and there are still tickets available starting at $45 (and going up to like $700).

Queen Bey of course made local headlines in February when she appeared at Levi's during the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and her Black Panther-inspired dancers were photographed holding up a sign in solidarity with protesters of the Mario Woods shooting.

This time, she'll get to rule the stage without Chris Martin trying to steal any of her spotlight, and she'll presumably be doing a lot of numbers off of the highly personal new album — including the Black empowerment hit "Formation" that she performed during the Super Bowl show.

Following her show here, she'll head to Seattle, followed by Canada and the Midwest. And, most oddly, though she's doing shows in both Houston and Dallas, there is no New Orleans date scheduled on this tour despite the fact that the city serves as a backdrop and touchstone in several videos on the visual album. At least not yet.

Anybody want to take some odds that she's working up a Prince tribute for this leg of the tour?

Remember how Beyoncé got hooked up with that fancy Airbnb in Los Altos when she and Jay-Z were here for the Super Bowl back in February? Well it appears Justin Bieber got a piece of that same promotional action — or his team just coughed up the money for it — because he also stayed in the $10K/night rental, the listing of which you can find here. The place has Bay Views, and E! Online got some more details after the Biebs posted the Instagram show below of himself, praying (?), while standing in the infinity pool.

I'm guessing this was another plug by Airbnb to show how big celebrities use their service, and that the deal is that the celebrity just has to post a photo of themselves on social media, just like Bey did a few feet away by the fire pit.

Bieber's post, which went up yesterday, prior to his Oracle Arena show tonight in Oakland, already has 1.7 million likes. Unlike Beyonce, he did not specifically namecheck Airbnb. Will he back there tonight, I wonder, with a legion of determined tween girls camped at his gate?

Who's going to the show tonight, huh?? I'm truly curious where the Bieber fan base and SFist's audience overlap.

This actually is a pretty good pop song, you guys. In case you hadn't heard it like everywhere.

As you may have guessed, that group of Black Panther beret-clad backup dancers at the Super Bowl halftime show didn't plan to create their own viral video in support of justice for Mario Woods — getting the protest sign into the dancers' hands was actually the work of two local Black Lives Matter activists, as the Guardian reports, who happened to be students in a school band that was performing on the field on Sunday.

Rheema Emy Calloway and Ronnisha Johnson, both organizers in the Black Lives Matter movement, said they "chased the dancers down" right after the performance and when they handed them the sign and asked if they'd be will to shoot the brief video, which quickly went viral. Says Calloway, "From the look on the faces of the dancers, they'd already heard about the case."

It was fitting, too, that Beyoncé's new song, "Formation," the video for which was shot in New Orleans, speaks to black pride and black power, and the costume choice quickly conjured images of the Panthers — over which the conservative news media and politicians went a little nuts in the ensuing 24 hours.

Calloway also told the Guardian she was thrilled that Beyoncé made such a powerful statement in support of the movement at the Super Bowl, saying, "She’s rekindling the spirit of Nina Simone. I hope it can shift the conversation about what it means to be black and proud."

Also, the video from the dancers served to lift the spirit of Gwendolyn Woods, Mario's still grieving mother, who told the Guardian, "I was really depressed, and that gave me a jolt. To see them with the sign in the stands, it jolted me back into reality. It uplifted me."

She added that the entire day was bittersweet because of how much Mario loved football, and how he had been having a great time at Levi's Stadium just last August, when he got to attend the 49ers' pre-season game against the Dallas Cowboys.

Previously: In Black Panther Garb, Beyonce's Super Bowl Dancers Hold 'Justice For Mario Woods' Sign

All previous Mario Woods coverage on SFist.

She's just like the rest of us!

Does anyone recognize this modern looking Airbnb rental home where Beyoncé, and presumably Jay Z, spent their Super Bowl weekend in the Bay Area?

Beyoncé was also kind enough to do a shilling for Airbnb via Facebook, which I'm sure they're pleased about.

For potential identification purposes, so that we can recommend it to our baller friends who want to sleep where Beyoncé once slept, below is an enlargeable version of the full photo, which shows just the outlines of a very nice outdoor patio area.

Update: It's in Los Altos as Curbed finds out. And they surmise, probably correctly, that her plug on Facebook was likely due to the fact that Airbnb footed the bill for this $10K per night rental. So, no, she's not like the rest of us.

Click to enlarge

Here concludes our coverage of Beyoncé at the Super Bowl, I promise.

Previously: Super Bowl 50: Watch Coldplay Refuse To Leave The Stage During Beyoncé's Halftime Show

A quick post-mortem about that bizarre halftime show: If, like us, you were confused by the choice to let Coldplay anywhere near a stage on which Beyoncé is performing, a new interview in Rolling Stone reveals that yesterday was not the first time Queen Bey made Chris Martin feel small.

The whole interview only exists in print right now, but Rolling Stone posted a few highlights, among which is this.

Martin once presented a song to Beyoncé called "Hook Up" and played it in the studio for her and producer Stargate. She turned it down, he says, "in the sweetest possible way: She told me, 'I really like you — but this is awful.'"

Martin also apparently talked about how excited he was to perform at the Super Bowl, and talks about how he "plotted just how Bruno Mars and Beyoncé would play their roles onstage."

Wait, what? Are we supposed to believe that Chris Martin should be thanked for all the choreography, or...?

In related news, following on the tweetstorm last night over Empire star Taraji P. Henson's social media goof in which she mistook Coldplay for Maroon 5, Maroon 5 has taken it in stride and just decided to thank her.

Previously: Super Bowl 50: Watch Coldplay Refuse To Leave The Stage During Beyoncé's Halftime Show

Like a friend who insists on reminding you of the good times you've shared — "Clocks!" remember "Clocks?" — but of whom you've grown somewhat ashamed, Brit-pop "global citizens" Coldplay refused to leave the stage to "guests" Beyoncé and Bruno Mars moments ago at the Super Bowl 50 Halftime show.

You may recall that when we learned of Beyoncé's addition to the snoozer of a headliner, we changed our minds about tuning in to the year's longest advertisement for America, and indeed we promptly awoke when she and Bruno Mars entered the scene.

There was one problem, though: Coldplay's Chris Martin never consciously uncoupled from the stage.

Some noted their confusion with Martin's appearance, asking reasonable questions about him.

Others expressed sympathy that Coldplay was left out of "Formation," as it were.

Yes just one day after the release of her song, we are fully capable of making jokes based on Beyoncé's newest hit.

For the record, Sarah Silverman keeps hot sauce in her bag, right next to her vape pen.

In the end, a feeble truce was struck, and the three performers managed to occupy the strange, moving stage comfortably.

A quick video history lesson in Super Bowl Halftime Shows, recapping famous performances of yore, told us everything we needed to know about nonlinear progress.

Honestly, a cut to "Left Shark" would have felt more apt.

And one final touch from the performance was a meaningless message we could all agree on: Love. And Rainbows.

That's right: very #lovewins, no? Did Super Bowl 50 just successfully appropriate the iconography of the gay marriage movement? I don't know, but welcome to the Bay Area, so glad you could make it!

Related: Levi's Stadium Turf Troubles Send Players On Both Sides Of Super Bowl Flying

Just in time for Super Bowl 50, multi-hyphenate Beyoncé has released "Formation," the song she'll be performing as part of the game's halftime event.

Coldplay is ostensibly the halftime headliner, not that you'd know it based on the excitement around this, Beyoncé's first solo single since 2014’s “7/11″ and “Ring Off."

Bruno Mars will also be performing during the halftime show, and Lady Gaga will be singing the National Anthem prior to kick-off.

The video (you can watch it below) incorporates antebellum themes, Black Lives Matter verbiage and images, and a lot of booty shaking. I'm in.

And, hey, Beyoncé appears to think that some of you will like the video enough to wear it. If any of you want to get me the "I twirl on them haters" sweatshirt, I'm a large.

Previously: Super Bowl 50 Gets Even Harder To Care About As Coldplay Announced As Halftime Headliner
Will Beyoncé Make You Tune Into Super Bowl 50's Halftime Show?