Beyoncé Takes the Hoedown to New Orleans

One thing about Beyoncé — she’s gonna make it about Louisiana. The creole banjee cowboy dropped “Texas Hold ’Em (Pony Up) Remix” on April 4, trading the original second verse’s banjos and whoops for some homegrown New Orleans bounce. For those of us who can’t keep up with the line dance at the hoedown, Ms. Carter said, Here’s some hip-hop beats for y’all to shake ass on the dance floor. There’s new lyrics, too. The original version takes shelter in whiskey as tornadoes whip past. “Pony Up,” by contrast, channels all that stress into a blurry bender. “Let’s get weekend wasted,” she croons. “Might as well just throw it all / And pony up, bitch, don’t hold back on me / It’s a rodeo, we gon’ do-si-do / Broke me in and then you take me home, huh.” She even updates the outro’s lyrics to round out the remix. “Pony up and salute your town / Chasin’ our sins away, way brown,” Beyoncé recommends. With all this talk of whiskey, I hope she has some electrolytes and Tylenol handy for when the song likely climbs the charts following the release of Cowboy Carter and the new remix.