Redefining Remixes: Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” Feat. Beyoncé

Last night, Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé just released the remix for the mega-hit song Savage and now the internet is broken. A simple link-up between Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé at a New Year’s Eve party was exciting enough to get the media buzzing with screenshots of their photo booth pictures together. Expecting a collaboration from the two Houston-born women, its brightest prospect and its OG Queen, would have been entitled.

After all, fans have spent years begging for her to record a duet with her own sister. So her remix of Megan’s “Savage”—not just a 16-bar verse tacked on at the end; but a full re-imagination of the hit song, with new raps from Megan too—is an unexpected treat.

Beyoncé has often been at her freest and most experimental on these kinds of one-offs. There, the stakes are presumably lower than they are on her monumental albums.

She joked about her elevator scandal on a remix of ***Flawless. Queen Bey out-rapped both Jay Z and Future on DJ Khaled’s Top Off. She even flexed some Spanish on a remix of J Balvin’s Mi Gente; to raise money for victims of Hurricane Harvey.

The whimsy she brings to those non-album drops is all over the Savage remix, also a charity release. Proceeds will support COVID-19 relief in Houston, via the Methodist organization Bread of Life Inc. The song retains the simple piano beat and staccato hook that propelled it to viral status, but Beyoncé upgrades the original from a good song to a multi-dimensional one.

The original song had quickly become one of TikTok dancers’ favorites; people stuck at home during nationwide stay-at-home orders have started doing dance challenges with their families set to it and a mix of other tracks.

Listen to Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé in the Savage remix below:

Few artists ever sound like they’re having a better time than Beyoncé does when she raps. In her second verse, she references the late-night stripper Instagram phenomenon Demon Time, the pornographic subscription service Onlyfans. She also mentions the social media network du jour TikTok; as if to tease fans who are still stuck on the existence of her secret Snapchat account. 

All in all, the remix, with the multiple verses and the extra ad-libs, is a feel-good spin momentous enough to take our minds off the bleakness of the times we currently live in. It also re-establishes the blackness of the song in a sense, reclaiming it from white TikTok girls.