While Kelis is serving bitter Betty realness towards Beyoncé for using an interpolation of her song Milkshake without her knowledge, drag icon, musician and club legend Kevin Aviance is gagging over the fact that the entertainer has sampled his voice on the track Pure/Honey.
Via Variety:
New York City nightlife and drag queen legend Kevin Aviance didn’t know Beyoncé sampled his song “Cunty” on her new album “Renaissance” until a friend reached out to him late Thursday night.
“She sent me the track and the credits and said, ‘What is this?’” Aviance told me Friday afternoon. “And then my phone was blowing up. I couldn’t believe it.” Aviance’s vocals from his 1996 dance hit can be heard at the top of “Pure/Honey,” Track 15 on Beyoncé’s much-anticipated album.
When he finally listened to the song, Aviance said, “I felt seen,” adding: “It has been a very emotional day.”
“C—y” was inspired by queer “kids” hanging out at the Christopher Street Pier almost 30 years ago. “They were looking in pieces of broken mirror saying, ‘I look so c—y,’” Aviance recalled. “But it’s not in a bad way. Most people hear the C-word and think it’s something negative and just talking about a women’s private parts. My ‘C—y’ isn’t that. It’s about power.”
Aviance isn’t the only queer icon on “Renaissance.” Big Freedia is heard on the album’s first single, “Break My Soul,” and the late Moi Renee’s “Miss Honey” is also featured toward the end of “Pure/Honey.” DJ Honey Dijon produced “Cozy.”
Bey also dedicated the album to her late gay Uncle Johnny, who died of AIDS, and “to all of the pioneers who originate culture, to all of the fallen angels whose contributions have gone unrecognized for far too long.”
“This is a celebration for you,” Beyoncé wrote on her website on Thursday.
“She’s a goddess to me,” said Aviance, who recently released a new single titled “I’m Back.” “She’s my Black queen. For her to be holding up someone who is Black and gay, it’s so beautiful.”
I have been a huge fan of Kevin ever since I had the opportunity to see him perform back in the day. Long before it was trendy, Kevin was a gender-bender whenever he expressed his art of drag in the clubs.
Cunty (along with his other hits Din Da Da and Rhythm Is My Bitch) is such an iconic song, and I love the fact that Beyoncé is paying homage to so many black queer icons, such as Moi Renee, Kevin Aviance, Ts Madison, DJ Honey Dijon, Green Velvet and Big Freedia, to name a few.
What I hope what this album does is open up her fans eyes to how house music is rooted in black gay culture, and that the artist she has sampled will free the minds of the BeyHive, and they go listen to and support the legends that inspired her, and the talented Out artists who are making music.