Beyoncé crafted the masterpiece with black pride and the spirit of historically black colleges and universities.

At the glittering centre of it all is Beyoncé herself: master maker of her own modern myth; an uber-perfectionist capitalist surveying her multimedia empire.

Non-Beylievers should check out Homecoming, too: it's unabashedly indulgent at nearly two-and-a-half hours, but conveys a more tactile, communal sense of her star magnetism than you might glean from her mirror-sheen recordings.