“It solidified me as a voice and a global phenomenon,” Ts Madison says of her collaboration with Beyoncé. The pop icon’s seventh studio album, Renaissance, has been lauded as one of her best with fans and critics commending her homage to the Black and queer pioneers of music and ballroom. Sampling Ts Madison’s viral video Bitch I’m Black, Cozy debuted inside the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, with Madison - and producer Honey Dijon - making history in the process as the first Black trans women to chart.
“I know [Beyoncé] watched me because there are things that I’ve done, like in the words she says, ‘Dancing in the mirror, kiss my scars because I love what they made,’” Madison tells GAY TIMES. “There’s videos of me dancing, talking about myself as a trans person with scars on my body. It’s like she took her time and she understood the voice she was using, and the statement she was making in this song, and she sang about our flag. I was overwhelmed with emotions.”
Although Madison has been a staple within the LGBTQ+ community for a number of years, she’s finally been catapulted into the pop culture zeitgeist as a recurring judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race, a role in the critically-acclaimed black comedy Zola and as the host of The Ts Madison Experience, which made her the first Black trans woman to star in and executive produce her own reality series.
Later this year, the trailblazer will also star alongside Billy Eichner in Bros - which makes history as the first gay romantic comedy from a major studio with an entirely LGBTQ+ principal cast - and as a rich British woman mourning the death of
