Hold your horses! Beyoncé has just unveiled an exclusive limited edition album cover for her forthcoming Cowboy Carter LP, just one day after debuting the album’s eye-popping standard artwork.
On Wednesday, the 32-time Grammy winner took to her official Instagram page to share the alternate Cowboy Carter artwork — which is exclusively available for purchase through her official online webstore.
For the new cover, Beyoncé strikes a statuesque pose on a small, gray platform as she stands completely nude with nothing but a pageant sash covering her body. Her hair is braided up with red, white, and beige beads, while the completely black background echoes the artwork for the rodeo queen-nodding standard cover and the artwork for 2022’s Renaissance album.
Yesterday (March 19), Queen Bey revealed the standard cover for Cowboy Carter, which features the singer perched backwards on a white horse mid-gallop as she raises a cropped American flag and dons red, white and blue chaps and a pageant sash that reads the album’s title.
The fact that the pageant sash is a recurring motif on both Cowboy Carter album covers was not lost on eagle-eyed fans — especially because of the name printed on the sash for the limited edition cover. Instead of “Cowboy Carter,” that sash reads “Beyincé,” a variant spelling of Tina Knowles‘ maiden name. While some social media commentators were left feeling perplexed at the name, Knowles has spoken at length about the history of her family’s name, most recently during her appearance on Heather Thomson’s In My Heart podcast in 2020.
“A lot of people don’t know that Beyoncé is my last name. It’s my maiden name,” she told Thomson. “My name was Celestine Beyoncé, which at that time was not a cool thing to have that weird name.”
According to Knowles, a businesswoman and fashion designer in her own right, she is one of a handful of people in her family with that spelling of “Beyoncé” due to a clerical error on several of their birth certificates. Her brother and his children, including award-winning songwriter Angie Beyincé, spell their surname with an “I” instead of an “O.”
“I think me and my brother Skip were the only two that had B-E-Y-O-N-C-E,” she continue. “Because we asked my mother when I was grown, I was like, ‘Why is my brother’s name spelled B-E-Y-I-N-C-E? You know, it’s all these different spellings.’ And my mom’s reply to me was, like, ‘That’s what they put on your birth certificate.’” Knowles went on to reflect on asking her mother to demand a correction, but the reality of the times were that “Black people didn’t get birth certificates.”
The new Cowboy Carter album cover brings Beyoncé’s devotion to her family’s legacy — which she sings of in Billboard Hot 100 hit “16 Carriages” (No. 38) — full circle. Now, both her married name (Carter, by way of husband Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter) and her mother’s maiden name are represented in the artwork for her upcoming album.
This isn’t the first time Beyoncé has incorporated her family names in her ventures. In 2006, she and her mother started House of Deréon, a clothing line whose name was derived from her maternal grandmother’s maiden name. Seven years later, she mounted the Mrs. Carter Show World Tour in support of her Billboard 200-topping 4 and self-titled LPs, and in 2016, she launched Ivy Park, an athleisure clothing line whose name is partially inspired by her daughter’s, Blue Ivy Carter.
In addition to sharing the new Cowboy Carter album cover, Beyoncé also shared some snaps from her and Jay-Z’s exclusive annual Gold Party in celebration of the Oscars. Among the photos were a regal shot of her mother, an adorable picture of the “Crazy In Love” power couple snuggling with one and another and several gorgeous flicks showcasing yet another Western-inspired outfit from Queen Bey.
Cowboy Carter —which features “16 Carriages” and the historic Hot Country Songs chart-topper “Texas Hold ‘Em” — hits digital streaming platforms on March 29.
Check out the limited edition Cowboy Carter album cover below:
