Even the announcement took some by surprise. In a prime-time commercial during the TV broadcast of the Super Bowl in February, superstar Beyoncé revealed that she would be releasing a new album.
At the same time, references to "Act II" appeared on her website, followed by a date - March 29 - and then two new singles: "Texas Hold 'Em" and "16 Carriages".
Is Queen Bey now making country music? The thought came as an even bigger surprise to some fans than the album announcement itself.
On Friday, March 29, "Cowboy Carter" will be released - the follow-up to her 2022 album "Renaissance" and the eighth solo studio album by Beyoncé, long one of the most successful musicians in the world by album sales.
The single "Texas Hold 'Em" has already made it to the top of the US country charts "Hot Country Songs". It's the first solo single by a black woman to have had this musical honour.
But Beyoncé also shrugged off genre categorization. "This ain’t a country album. This is a 'Beyoncé' album," she said, unveiling the cover on Instagram.
The 42-year-old, who is married to musician Jay-Z and has three children, commented on Instagram that she felt honoured - but also made it clear that she didn't want it to be about race.
"My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist's race as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant."
The cover shows Beyoncé on a white horse, with a white cowboy hat, white hair and white boots and a suit and flag in red, white and blue. The pop icon says she worked on the album for five years.
"It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed ... and it was very clear that I wasn't."
US media have reported this experience could be about a performance by Beyoncé and the Dixie Chicks at the 2016 Country Music Awards, which was sharply criticized by many viewers and audience members, some even calling her racist slurs.
Instead of defending the artists, the organizers deleted a social media post about the performance.
"Because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive," Beyoncé writes. Her professed goal with the album is to break down barriers, challenge herself and blur the boundaries of musical genres.
At a time when country music is still largely made and heard by white men, people of colour still have a hard time succeeding in this genre - even if some, like Charley Pride, had a massive influence on country music.
Superstars such as Ray Charles, Tina Turner, Lionel Richie and, most recently, Lil Nas X have also experimented with the genre. Singer Mickey Guyton recently addressed the challenges in the song "Black Like Me" - and was the first black female artist to be nominated for a Grammy in the "Best Country Solo Performance" category.
Some in US media have adopted Beyoncé's line that the album is not about inflitrating a new genre, but about making a statement.
"'Cowboy Carter' is an extension of the pop superstar’s exploration of how Black creativity fuels all corners of popular music. She’s embracing the music, not the industry," the New York Times writes.
Things look different in the country scene of Nashville, Tennessee, where there has so far been relatively little interest in Beyoncé. Traditional country radio stations have paid little attention to her latest two singles.