Words by Bailey Alexander
Two decades have passed since Beyoncé stepped out on her own, delivering one of the most memorable and important debut albums of all time.
When Beyoncé showcased her debut album Dangerously in Love to label execs 20 years ago, they told her that the tracklist lacked a hit single. It’s a tale that sounds unbelievable. Years later, she would speak on the experience, coyly stating that, from a certain perspective, their words rang true: “I guess they were kind of right. I had five”.
Writing this article and revisiting the album for the umpteenth time, I thought I would see if I could count the five she was probably referring to. It was easy enough: ‘Crazy in Love’, ‘Baby Boy’, ‘Naughty Girl’, ‘Me, Myself and I’, and an infectious remake with the late great Luther Vandross, ‘The Closer I Get to You’. All five songs are hits, but that doesn’t make the other 10 tracklisted songs anything less than stone-cold classics.
Clocking in as track 8 on the album, ‘Signs’ should be considered vital listening for anyone hoping to learn a bit more about the lore that has manifested around Beyoncé over the years. If you were to use Renaissance as a starting point, latch onto the astrology thread that Beyoncé’ weaved into the title of ‘Virgo’s Groove’, and then to follow it back to its origin, you would arrive at ‘Signs’, a coveted deep cut featuring Missy Elliott that behaves as the event horizon to the significance that astrological placement has since played in Beyonce’s career: “I wish he was a Virgo / The same sign as me”. Just for the record, JAY Z is a Saggitarius.
Speaking of HOV, his presence on Beyoncé’s projects is even more prevalent than any star sign motifs. JAY Z appears twice on the album, most notably on ‘Crazy in Love’, the couple’s most popular collaboration. It made Beyoncé the third woman to ever top the UK singles and album charts simultaneously, at the time joined only in that exclusive group only by Mariah Carey and Kylie Minogue.
Beyoncé’s achievements were incredible, and a welcome outcome to the pressure she had fallen under to deliver the project of a lifetime. 2003 was no different to 2023: women would be needlessly pitted against each other, and Beyoncé found herself constantly compared with her Destiny’s Child groupmates, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams. The girls all had their own independent success: Rowland was the first DC member to release a chart-topping hit, ‘Dilemma’, alongside Nelly, whilst Williams was the first DC member to release a solo album.
Still, despite their individual successes, this didn’t stop critics from trying to pit the group against one another. In their review of Rowland’s 2002 debut album Simply Deep, The Guardian disappointingly introduces her to the reader as “no longer a mere backing vocalist for Beyoncé Knowles”. The review and its attitude would leave a sour taste in anybody’s mouth, as it tries to sully the achievements and sisterhood of one of R&B’s greatest groups.
Combatting this, Beyoncé takes a couple of moments on Dangerously in Love to show her gratitude to Destiny’s Child, the first being that the album’s title is literally the name of a Destiny’s Child song. More notably, the album sees Beyoncé deliver her own rendition of said Destiny’s Child track, aptly titled ‘Dangerously in Love 2’. It serves as a reminder of where she came from, and its a touching sentiment that Beyoncé is still expressing today, currently performing the track as the opening song on her Renaissance tour setlist.
Dangerously in Love would join Destiny’s Child’s discography as the bedrock of a truly incomparable career. Her follow-up 2006 album B’Day debuted with higher sales than Dangerously in Love, signalling just how much Beyoncé’s already palpable success had skyrocketed since her debut effort. Skip forward to the present day, and Beyoncé is hailed as the greatest entertainer of our time, with her Renaissance album debuting at #1 last year, and the accompanying ongoing tour’s presale even causing the O2 Priority website to crash from overwhelming demand. Not too bad for someone 26 years into their career.
Pursuing a solo career away from a group, is quite the undertaking. Beyoncé’s Dangerously in Love and its legacy have proven that stepping out on your own can have remarkable consequences. Success this early into a solo career is pretty astonishing, but what makes Beyonce’s career so extraordinary is her unique ability to keep the momentum, delivering classic projects ever since Dangerously in Love, and hopefully doing so for a lot longer.