Beyoncé put “Can I Watch You” into the world on September 3, 2026, sitting seventeen tracks deep in B’DAY (20th Anniversary Edition), the 31-track reissue of her 2006 sophomore album. Pharrell Williams features on it and the two of them produced it together. Unlike most of what fills out the deluxe, it had sat completely unheard until now.
The rest of the reissue reads like a vault getting cleaned out. “Creole,” “Lost Yo Mind,” and “Back Up” all arrive officially, alongside “My First Time,” which got cut from Dangerously in Love in 2003. There is a JAY-Z remix of “Morning Dew (Donk),” a posthumous Selena duet built on “Como La Flor,” and a Maluma feature on “Cuerpo (Tumbao).” Thirty-one tracks deep, and “Can I Watch You” is still the one that feels like the actual find.
Beyoncé has described what the original sessions were chasing.
“I loved the minimalism of a beautiful vocal arrangement over a simple drum loop or a classic guitar like ‘Irreplaceable’…but only if that 808 was banging underneath.” – Beyoncé
“Can I Watch You” sits right inside that logic. It feels unhurried and low-lit, more suggestion than statement, and it works because Pharrell leaves so much room around the vocal. Twenty years in a vault and it still lands. It was built on a loop, a vocal, and a low end, which is a combination that keeps.
The packaging leans all the way into where the record came from. New cover art restages the 2006 promo shoot, Beyoncé on a Louisiana bayou riverbank holding an alligator by the tail, and the deluxe vinyl runs four LPs on 180-gram “Bayou Blue” with a 60-page booklet and two double-sided art prints for $149.98. B’Day originally landed on September 4, 2006 through Columbia, Music World Entertainment, and Sony Urban Music, and the anniversary campaign is putting all of that Southern imagery back at the front.
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