Surely the most logical approach to identifying the thesis statement for Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé’s new album, is to scour the opening track. “American Requiem” is restrained yet massive, tinged with intellectually charged psychedelic funkiness, like Prince shimmying in the shared part of the Venn diagram that has Around the World in a Day and Graffiti Bridge as overlapping circles. Beyoncé sings: “Used to say I spoke too country/ And the rejection came, said I wasn’t country ‘nough/ Said I wouldn’t saddle up, but/ If that ain’t country, tell me what is?”

Defining Beyoncé from the outside, particularly suggesting there are spaces where she doesn’t belong or pop art that she can’t lay a claim on, is the most foolish of foolhardiness. More than any other musical artist working today, she, and only she, decides her place and meets any proposed confinement with defiance manifested as demonstration of command. Like Lemonade and Renaissance before it, Cowboy Carter makes it plain that Beyoncé can recruit and command a fleet of collaborators to help her lay waste to any imagined boundaries between genres. She is a general and maestro.

The album’s title and advance singles, the sly “16 Carriages” and romping “Texas Hold ’em,” suggest that Beyoncé is primarily kicking in the saloon doors to the insular world of country music. Plenty of the additional material backs that narrative, led by the presence of and implicit blessing of full-on legends Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, the latter introducing a ripping cover of “Jolene” and the Chicks-crossed-with-TLC number “Tyrant.” More pointedly, Beyoncé enlists trailblazing Black country performer Linda Martell and several modern Black woman who are largely segregated away from success on country radio despite being as talented — and arguably more authentic — than many of the artists who are elevated to arena-packing success by the faux hayseed powers that be.

As the artist herself has argued, thinking of Cowboy Carter as Beyoncé’s version of a country album is reductive and woefully incomplete. The material here ranges far and wide: the elegant, effervescent, and beautifully sung Beatles cover “Blackbiird,” the sparkled-up Laurel Canyon pop of “Daughter,” the inside out soul of “Levii’s Jeans,” the Janelle Monáe–like vivacious hustle-bustle of “Ya Ya,” the gurgling funk of “Desert Eagle.” The digital version of Cowboy Carter numbers twenty-seven tracks and runs a minute longer than the first Toy Story film. If it lacks some of the thematic unity of its esteemed predecessors on the Beyoncé discography, the album compensates with the dazzling audacity of its creative largesse.

Cowboy Carter is, of course, the middle entry in an announced trilogy of albums from Beyoncé. Placed next to the survey of dance music that comprised Renaissance, the first of the three albums, this new release suggests Beyoncé is crafting nothing less than a magnum opus of modern music that claims every conceivable acre as land she can stride across. Her case is mightily convincing thus far. Bring on part three.