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- Beyoncé is the greatest entertainer of her generation.
This is a person who has a very intense
relationship with a very large body of fans.
- You went to the concert, and you
saw the concert filmed, right?
Three hours, yes, well-spent.
- (SINGING) I wanna house you and make you take my name
I've met so many of my goals, and I just
keep making new goals because I'm never satisfied,
and I always want to grow.
- Well, the highly anticipated second act
to Beyoncé's Renaissance project, Cowboy Carter,
dropped last night.
- You guys, oh, my god.
- I'm crying.
- She's the first Black woman ever to top the Billboard's
Hot Country Songs chart.
- There is a public perception about country music
that it is a predominantly white genre.
- I mean, I've seen people say things like,
I didn't know that there were Black country singers.
- It's kind of an industry that takes care of its own.
- It has not been a genre that has been
accepting of Black people.
- You often find partisans of country music
saying, well, this is or that ain't country.
- Beyoncé, honey, you need to stop.
- How is that supposed to be country?
- That Beyoncé bullshit country song?
[scoffs] Bitch, please.
- I think, pretty clearly, what Beyoncé
is trying to do is shove open a door for other Black artists.
- When I heard "16 Carriages--"
- (SINGING) 16 carriages driving away while I watch them
- --I was like, it has begun.
[laughs]
[music playing]
- We love Beyoncé!
- Beyoncé doesn't do anything small.
When she releases an album, she rolls
it out and invites the world.
- This is the greatest rollout moment of an album ever.
Beyoncé does a commercial on the Super Bowl.
- The network is crazy powerful.
I bet you can't break that.
- [laughs] I bet I can.
- Wait, what?
- All of America is already watching.
- The whole crux of the Verizon commercial
is, look at all the ways that I've
already broken the internet.
Look at all the things that I can do that people
will lose their minds over--
because I'm Beyoncé.
- What if I run for president?
What if I'm an alien?
What if I'm an astronaut?
We can handle anything.
And then she says--
- OK, they ready.
Drop the new music.
- Fuck the game!
What?
What is she talking about, where is this-- what?
Did she just say that?
Did it really mean-- is there new music?
- I was not even watching the Super Bowl.
I was at a performance for a friend
and had turned my phone off.
And as soon as I got in my car, you
would have thought someone had died because there
were like 50 messages.
Have you heard it?
Did you see it?
- Part of the excitement with Cowboy Carter
was the suggestion that this would be a country album.
The fans are like, yes!
Let's go.
We want this.
They love this.
- (SINGING) family live and died in America
Good ole USA, good ole USA
Shit, whole lotta red in that white and blue
- I mean, there's so much red in the white and blue?
It's, you know, the violence that Black and Brown people
have experienced being in America, but not so overt
that it's a protest song.
We're just saying, America, we have a problem.
Cowboy Carter is a political album,
placing herself in country, where we're
not supposed to feel welcome.
- It's really finna get real because you have to acknowledge
her gift and her talent, and then
she's bringing that to a genre that is not used to change.
[guitar playing]
My love for country music began--
man, I was probably about knee-high to a grasshopper--
put it that way.
I was real little.
It just came out as, like, I was soaked in it.
You know what I'm saying?
[laughs]
(SINGING) Leading my way like Sinatra
And on a bad day, yeah, I got a mantra
Be original, be yourself
Don't worry about anyone else
I grew up in Mississippi on a farm,
born the son of a preacher.
My granddad was a truck driver and farmer.
And the backyard was 100 acres.
They had Duroc hogs, blue turkey, 110 head of chickens,
whiskey stills down off in the bottom.
[laughs]
(SINGING) Now, every show is sold out
To me, I didn't see country as a color, but other people did.
(SINGING) You say you want a country
Well, country is what I'm playing
There's no doubt, I can hold out
- Aaron has been doing this for a very long time.
He's one of those people where it's long overdue for him
to see the success that he deserves.
- I have a buddy.
He said, Aaron, I want you to meet this guy.
He was an artist.
He plays at the Grand Ole Opry and everything.
I ain't going to drop no names.
So I asked him where he was from, and he's
like, California.
And I said, all right, I'm from Mississippi.
And he's like, so what do you do?
Rap?
And I was like, whoa, he went for the sweet move.
And I'm like, nah, bro, I do traditional country.
And it was-- and that was it.
He didn't say too much, and he just walked off.
Yeah, so, he's a white country artist,
and he has all this opportunity.
And look at his attitude towards somebody he don't know,
and he just seen a color.
So that gave me more fire to keep doing me,
keep writing what I write, keep living my life,
and don't worry about artists like that.
Because artists like that got it made in the shade.
I ain't got it made in the shade.
- The country music industry has
not done any work to make Black people feel safe in the music.
We have just been so overlooked.
- You cannot be scared of what country looks like.
Country ain't never been a color.
When I first heard the two singles drop, I was like, uh,
shit, that's country.
[laughs]
(SINGING) 16 car--
Man, what?
- I have always felt that Beyoncé
has a sort of national personality
where everybody can see themselves reflected.
- (SINGING) Say my name, say my name
When no one is around you
- Beyoncé obviously coming out of Destiny's
Child, an R&B girl group.
- (SINGING) Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, oh, no, no
- The solo career starts, psh, explodes.
- (SINGING) Get me bodied
- She's somebody who has never really been beholden to genre
in a way that was limiting to her,
whether that be pop, whether that be R&B. She seems
to move to the next thing.
- (SINGING) To the left, to the left
I write the songs that I need to hear,
and that I feel other women need to hear.
And I'm all about empowerment and the strength that we have
when we unite as women.
- Beyoncé had come to be seen as an artist
for everyone, someone that a lot of white women
could gravitate towards.
- I've kind of broken barriers, and I don't think
people think about my race.
I think they look at me as an entertainer and a musician.
- She would do all of the things
that a pop star has to do.
But when she moves into Lemonade,
she moves into the space where she is reflecting
a world that she wants to see.
- This is a woman who shouted out the Black Panthers
at the Super Bowl.
- It is a notion of, "we have arrived,
and we're taking up space, and we're not going to ask you
for permission to do that."
I think "Formation" was really one of the first times
that people had to stop and be like,
oh, maybe this isn't for me.
The "Formation" video came out at a time when there was
so much commentary happening around the Black
Lives Matter movement.
We have her singing about how much she loves her Negro nose
and her Jackson 5 nostrils.
- (SINGING) I like my Negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils
- These are choices that Beyoncé
is making that relate to her own maturation as a
human being.
- Trayvon did not have to die.
We all know the reason why.
- Looking at the way Black people are treated
and standing up for women who have been wronged by society.
- There was a time when a woman's opinion did not matter.
If you were Black, white, Mexican, Asian, Muslim,
educated, poor or rich, if you were a woman,
it did not matter.
Look how far we've come from having no voice.
(SINGING) You won't break my soul
- Renaissance is about Black women and queer people,
and it is this powerful upliftment.
- I see you.
I love you.
I center you.
And then she comes with a country album.
(SINGING) This ain't Texas, woo!
Ain't no hold 'em
- My banjo being on a world recognized song
is just kind of blowing my mind.
(SINGING) So park your Lexus
- TikToks of Black people dancing
to the sound of my banjo?
Stop.
That banjo represents hundreds of years of our history,
whether people know it or not.
[banjo playing]
The banjo is an instrument invented
by people of the African diaspora in the Caribbean.
- Enslaved people brought versions of the banjo
to the United States over on the ships.
- And then it makes its way up with them to North America
and becomes a central part of Black life.
And there are loads of white people playing music to it.
- It took the Scottish, the Africans,
Native American people to come together.
I'm going to borrow this, and I'm going to borrow this,
and I'm going to borrow this.
And like, it's like gumbo.
- What happens, then, is a couple of things.
You have the great migration, a lot of Black people
leaving the South, and then you also have the recording
industry coming in.
They're wanting to sell music to certain people.
- What was called "hillbilly music"
in the 1920s and what were called "race records"
around the same time was basically code
for a certain brand of white music and a certain
brand of Black music.
Eventually, race records evolved
into what's known as rhythm and blues
or R&B. What's known as hillbilly became country.
- It was like the ultimate capitalist decision
to split these things in half.
- They create the segregation, and then we
have perpetuated it as the music industry has grown.
This is not like, oh, Black people
are getting into country-- no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Like, we've been in country music, right?
- You can go back to, like, the first family of country
music, the Carter Family.
- (SINGING) Oh, he taught me to love him and promised to love
- Carter specifically had this very distinct playing style.
Well, it came from a Black man.
It came from Lesley Riddle.
And of course, that historically
has always been attributed to Ma Carter, when
that's actually Lesley Riddle.
- I mean, one of the earliest stars of the Grand Ole Opry
in the 1920s was DeFord Bailey, the so-called
"harmonica wizard."
[playing harmonica]
- There were literally Black artists
there from the first night that the Grand Ole Opry began.
Linda Martell.
- (SINGING) Yoodle-la-di-eee-eee
- She was the highest Black woman to chart until Beyoncé.
And this was in the late '60s.
- Of course, Charley Pride.
- (SINGING) We'll walk the fields together
- Charley Pride had 29 number ones on country radio.
- He succeeded in spite of the fact that he was Black,
not because he was Black, you know what I mean?
- If you take Hank Williams, Sr., for example,
he fused the blues with country music.
- (SINGING) I tried so hard, my dear
- So it has a very inherently Black inspiration
in our genre that happened with the godfather of country music.
So this started a long, long time ago.
It seemed to be that we've gotten away from that
somewhere along the way.
- We have to remember it is an industry.
People who are in power decided this is
what the Nashville sound is.
- Nashville is the gateway to country music.
It is not only the center of country the way,
say, the movie and television business
is centered in Hollywood.
It really is kind of the arbiter of what country
music is.
There's no one faction that controls Nashville wholly,
but it's kind of an industry that takes care of its own.
- The idea that it only happens in country music
is a little misleading.
There is definitely gatekeeping happening in hip-hop.
There's a ton of gatekeeping that happens in jazz.
- I think a lot of people still think
that this is like a meritocracy,
and that's absolutely not true.
- Greed is driving the train.
- Everyone has a boss.
The bosses have bosses.
The top bosses have shareholders.
There's this constant chain of fear,
which slows down progress.
- The thing that they know for sure how to do
is to market white men.
- The Mount Rushmore of country today
would be Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs,
Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean, still be Kenny
Chesney up there, Keith Urban.
It's generally held by label heads in Nashville
that it's a bad bet to give a contract to a female singer.
- (SINGING) When they bury our dreams
We push them up through concrete
We're growing where--
- I will never forget this.
I'm sitting in the hallway at a major label in Nashville.
I can hear them playing the music.
And everything sounds really positive,
and everyone's laughing, and they're talking.
Oh, this sounds so pretty.
Oh, it's good.
Blah, blah, blah.
And then, everybody peeks out the window, and I'm like, hi.
And then suddenly, you know, suddenly it's like, oh, well,
we got to figure out how to find songs for someone
like her.
Let's tweak some things with her accent.
Maybe we need to figure out how to build an audience
for someone like her.
- Black people have a hard time in country music.
Queer people have a hard time in country music.
But even white women have a hard time in country music.
- If you ask one country radio executive,
he says the key to success is leaving the women out.
- Tomato gate is a flare-up that
happened when a radio programmer
was quoted saying that--
- To maximize radio listenership,
women should be like tomatoes in a larger
salad of male artists--
never played back to back and never more than about 20%
of the mix.
- All of a sudden I was this idiot saying,
take women off radio.
- The lettuce is Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton and Keith Urban
and artists like that.
- We're not thinking about gender fairness.
We're just trying to make money.
There are certain things that make ratings go down.
Every country radio station in a rated market,
you won't find anybody playing over 20% females.
Not a single one.
- The sad thing about that comment
was that it does largely reflect
reality as country radio programmers understand it.
- However dismal that number is for white women,
it's a fraction of a fraction for Black women.
I believe we make up 0.03%.
Since its inception, there have only
been eight Black women to be on the Billboard Country charts.
I am one of them.
- There are 1,000 ways I can respond to the question of, how
do we make radio more diverse?
But fundamentally, we don't want to.
- I don't think that there's any financial incentive
for them right now to try to figure out
how to market a Black woman, because up until Beyoncé,
there was no reason.
- In a country where we think there's racism--
and there is-- there is no racism by country radio.
If you give me a great record, I don't
care what your skin color is.
If the Beyoncé record is the best record,
I'll play it more than anyone else.
- Country music is supposedly three chords and the truth.
But one of the open questions about country music
is, who's delivering that truth?
- Who gets to say what country is, what the South is about?
- Beyoncé told you years and years ago
that she will never take the country out
of her because that's who she is culturally.
She grew up going to the Houston Rodeo.
When she came back to the rodeo a couple of years later
as a solo artist, she wrote into the stadium
on the back of a horse.
- When you look at the cover art of Cowboy Carter,
she's representing that rodeo queen.
- She's from the South.
My parents are from Louisiana, Alabama.
Do I not to get to have a say in what
the South should sound like?
- I'm stoked that Beyoncé is tapping into her Texas roots.
(SINGING) Time is ticking like it always does
It flies right by
There's so much music culture in Texas,
and I think country is an important dimension
of that music.
(SINGING) You can do to quell
I grew up on the outskirts of Houston,
and I grew up obsessed with country music.
As a young Black girl, listening to country music,
it didn't feel strange to me.
That was all I listened to.
And that really formed the foundation for what
I think of as a great song.
And I always carried that with me.
The first time I lived in Nashville was in the early
2000s, which was a starkly different
experience as a Black queer artist than I'm having now.
I'm not sure that the music culture
had been pressed enough to diversify
that I could find my place.
(SINGING) Say my name
I started to experiment with electronic music and R&B.
In the quarantine of 2020, I found
myself just reaching for something that felt like home.
(SINGING) I've wandered off from here to Houston,
Looking for a place that I can call my own
In Nashville, we are seeing some evolution,
but there are ceilings that I can't even feel that I don't--
I'm not even aware of because I can only get so far.
- People are placed into the box of, you're a Black woman.
You can only do this.
You should only be doing this.
These are the boundaries that we've established for you.
Roam free, but roam free within those boundaries.
People have tried to put whatever
labels or whatever boundaries or limitations on Beyoncé.
She's been able to stop and say, no, this is who I am.
- The first song on the album, "American Requiem."
See, this is the critical line.
- (SINGING) Used to say, I spoke too country
And then rejection came, said I wasn't country enough
- They used to say I was too country.
Then I wasn't country enough.
Whatever you think of Cowboy Carter,
this is a revenge album.
I'm going to come back with the baddest country
album you've ever seen, and I will
show you up at your own game.
- Before Act Two, Beyoncé came out
with a statement on social media
and shared that this album was born out of an experience
that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed.
- You can only assume she's referring to the 2016
CMA Awards when she performed "Daddy Lessons"
with the Chicks.
- (SINGING) With his head held high, he told me not to cry
Oh, my daddy said shoot
- It definitely made me think of that moment,
while I was at the CMAs myself, to see Beyoncé in my hometown
of Nashville with the Chicks, this is probably
the best moment of my life.
Then, an audience member in front of me proceeds to say,
get that Black bitch off the stage right now.
I remember instantly kind of being taken back to reality
in that moment to realize that there's
like a threat of Black people being
in this genre for some reason.
For Beyoncé to not be welcomed feels like a gut punch.
- The crowd in the arena seemed to enjoy the performance,
but the social media universe was another story.
- Some country music fans were not happy about
Beyoncé's presence.
- After the awards, the CMAs published her performance
on social media that some people
were using to denounce Beyoncé being
there or for outright racism.
- That's right, folks.
Beyoncé performed at the CMAs last night
and is on a mission to take country music away from us
hardworking white people.
- Beyoncé did not belong there, even looked out of place.
Keep country, country.
- I don't know why they feel country is
so precious that it cannot be entered
by Beyoncé from Houston.
But here we are.
- It wasn't out of the norm to have someone like
Beyoncé there.
The CMA awards, every single year,
they book a pop star because they
want to get as many eyeballs on the presentation as possible.
- I was skep--
I am on record of being skeptical when she
came out with "Daddy Lessons."
What angered me about it was that it overshadowed,
you know, two other performers of color
who were kind of naturally there, Charley Pride, and then
myself as a guest of Eric Church,
having me sing on his song that's
all about like turning hate into love
and getting rid of these words of anger.
And that upset me that that was overshadowed.
- I'm not gonna lie.
My feelings were hurt a little bit because there
is a Black woman standing on a stage that I wanted to be on
and had never been invited to be a part of, even though I was
very much a part of the community
and had worked very hard to be a part of the community.
- Just because of the race of an artist
doesn't necessarily mean that's the reason they're not being
embraced by country fans.
There are dozens of pop stars or stars
from other genres coming to country music
and getting a cold shoulder.
- There have been attempts at crossover in country music
by everyone from Jewel to Jon Bon Jovi
that have not really taken.
- Beyoncé far and away is not the only one.
- Lil Nas X is a Black Southern man
who stumbled across a beat that sounded
to him like country music.
And instantly, Lil Nas X said, I can do something with this.
- (SINGING) Cowboy hat from Gucci, Wrangler on my booty
- He recorded a song that he called "Old Town Road."
He talked about having Wrangler on his booty.
Can't nobody tell me nothing.
And he just thought a cowboy song with this banjo sample
would be an instant success.
And he was right.
- I want to say thank you to every single person who
has made this moment possible for me.
- It was only when Billboard was told by factions within
Nashville, we don't consider this a country record,
that Billboard decided to pull "Old Town Road"
off of the Hot Country Songs chart,
and then all hell broke loose.
- A hit song is sparking controversy over what country
music should sound like.
- Billboard pulled it, decided it wasn't country enough.
- "Old Town Road," a song that Billboard actually
removed from the country charts because it
wasn't country enough.
- Is it because this is somebody
who's new to Nashville, didn't record in Nashville?
Is it because he's Black?
Does his race matter?
These were the kinds of questions folks were asking.
- Billboard responded to the backlash
by saying their decision to take the song off the country
chart had absolutely nothing to do with the race of the artist.
- That was Billboard, as an institution,
unilaterally deciding that is where that song resides.
That was not country music's decision,
but unfortunately, country music
got lumped with all of that.
I think it's also important to note that Lil Nas X
was invited to the CMA Awards.
It's also important to note that he
won a CMA Award for his collaboration
with Billy Ray Cyrus.
- Billy Ray Cyrus was approached and asked,
would you participate in a remix of "Old Town Road"?
And he said, yeah, because he wanted
to help Lil Nas X point a finger
and pose a question to Nashville.
If I add a white country singer and a cowboy hat to the song,
does it instantly become an actual country song?
- "Old Town Road" was all of me.
It was everything that I'd been raised on my whole life
by banjo and bluegrass and solid country hook.
If country music fans dig it, then it's country.
- Even though Billboard Magazine never let it back
on its Hot Country Songs chart, it established
that "Old Town Road" had kind of been
a country song all along.
- It did not stop there.
It just blew him up to the biggest possible proportion.
So when we think about an album like Cowboy Carter that gets
people asking questions to the institutions,
so I think that is the major thing that is going to assist
artists of color and queer artists
and being able to move forward.
- If I were to point to a period
where country music started wrestling with its identity,
I would say the killing of George Floyd in 2020.
- There are demonstrations going on right
now all across the country.
People on the streets in the middle of a pandemic
protesting the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
- That prompted a reckoning across the country that
led to country music asking, are we
contributing to this environment,
and can we be more welcoming?
- George Floyd and Sandra Bland and Ahmaud
Arbery got us as a country to start
thinking about these things.
And country music finally had to sit with itself.
- And a lot of people put out statements and posted
black squares and talked about the action
that they were going to take.
- It was very much, How can we put a Band-Aid on this?
instead of wanting to do the inner work and inner healing
that is required to create meaningful change when
something like that happens.
- It took Mickey Guyton 10 years to get her debut
album to be released.
George Floyd had to die for this woman
to put out a song that got recognized by the industry.
- (SINGING) And if you think we live
- She's recorded records like "Black Like Me--"
- (SINGING) You should try to be, oh, Black like me
- --where the subtext of her being a Black female country
artist is now the text.
And, you know, if country music is three chords and the truth,
that's Mickey Guyton's truth and she's singing about it.
- Country music is always evolving,
but when it does that, there's this,
like, push and pull between what it used to be,
where it wants to go, and where other people are pushing it.
- In 2021, TJ Osborne, one of the two Brothers Osborne,
came out as gay.
This is remarkable in the country music industry
for a mainstream country act.
- Before I came out, it was like these--
I felt very, like, stiff anywhere I went.
Well, you know, I was micromanaging every move.
(SINGING) Don't give me that look,
that "let me down easy" smile
I would sit still and hold a guitar
and sing into a microphone.
I didn't want to do anything or say
anything that might bring questions that
would make me uncomfortable.
(SINGING) I'm right back where I'm really home
- When TJ came out to me, I felt relieved for him
that he was able to tell me something like that.
I knew that he wasn't having to carry that weight.
Secrets are heavy, and that one must have been a metric ton.
And I cried genuine, happy tears.
I was proud of him.
I was happy to know that he, like the rest of us,
has been able to experience the complexities of life and love,
unfortunately, in secret.
But I felt like that was the first day of the rest
of our lives as brothers.
- I know that I wanted to come out publicly,
but how we were going to get there was years in the making.
In the video, "Stay a Little Longer," we put a gay couple
and an interracial couple.
And there was a lot of people that had a huge problem
with all of those things.
And it was like kind of odd because it
was like we were seen as allies, which was amazing.
But the whole time, it was like kind of seemed phony
to me because I'm gay.
And so as it went on, it was like, OK, we're gonna do this.
It came out in Time Magazine.
I didn't even get to read the article,
or I had no idea what was about to happen.
It was also challenging because I
didn't want it to be perceived as attention seeking.
I just wanted it to kind of happen
and move on with my life.
But things really changed in an instant for me.
- I hope you feel the tsunami of love that is headed--
that has been heading your way ever since you spoke out.
- And I did feel a sense of purpose I'd never felt before.
Being able to truly, completely be myself and be happy,
I had fallen back in love with what we did again,
more than I'd ever had before.
I felt, like, a closeness with our fans
that I never felt before.
I didn't know what to expect.
I mean, I did not expect this.
This is incredible.
Thank you.
- Yeah!
- If I could go back now from here
and tell myself where I would be, like, oh, my God,
I would never believe that I would have ended up here.
Younger me came out of that.
The very last line of the song, "You got me where I am today,
got a few things right along the way, you'll see.
Just wait, younger me."
- I'm almost getting teary eyed saying it now.
It's all part of living.
Life is scary, and it's kind of messy and ugly sometimes.
But if you push through, then beautiful things will happen.
And I think our lives are proof of that.
At the end of the day, the people
that will make the biggest impact are the artists.
- You know I love it when you sing along.
This is one of my favorite songs of all time.
It's called "Fast Car."
- Luke Combs recorded that song just to be an album cut, just
almost as like a fun thing, maybe
a tribute to Tracy Chapman.
It was a song that he sung all the time
when he was growing up.
- (SINGING) You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
- So the reason that "Fast Car" became this big hit was
completely organically, which is the new market that
we're seeing opening up in country
music and changing the paradigm that puts radio first.
- So much of country music is built on singing other people's
songs, being able to appreciate the people who create it
and where it comes from.
"Fast Car" is a song created by a Black woman.
- (SINGING) Maybe we'll make something
Me, myself, I got nothing to prove
- To see Tracy Chapman on the Grammy Award stage
with him in 2024 was an incredible moment
because it was him stepping back and allowing
her to have that moment.
- The success of Combs's rendition
makes Chapman the first Black female songwriter to top
the Country Airplay chart.
- We can't overlook that this was the first solo Black woman
to get these accolades.
And so when I hear just sort of the knee-jerk reaction
of like, well, anyone who doesn't like Beyoncé making
country songs must be racist, I think about all these
moments here.
- To see her being recognized for the powerhouse songwriter
that she is was incredible.
I wish that it had been for her version.
Luke Combs took a lot of flack, some deserved,
some not deserved.
But I really loved the performance
that he did on the Grammys.
It had been the first time that she'd performed in years,
and it was the most poignant moment of that whole evening,
and rightfully so.
And so I liked him centering her in that moment.
And I wish more people would do that.
This current moment that we're having right now,
you have this influx of Black artists coming in.
And it seems like there's this Renaissance.
You've got Madeleine Edwards, Shaboozey,
Camille Parker, Kane Brown.
You've got Darius being a modern-day Charley Pride.
- We've built upon so much of a legacy.
You had Rissi Palmer in the 2000s.
And then we have Holly G kind of coming in and taking
the torch again and creating Black Opry for all of us
artists to come together and to thrive collectively
and individually.
- When I'm at the Black Opry, I'm
thinking I'm the only person around that's Black
doing traditional country.
- (SINGING) Spring take me right on into summer
- I met so many Black artists, and it was like a homecoming.
And then when we started passing
the guitar around playing, I was like, wow!
- (SINGING) It was six days and seven nights in Myrtle Beach
- (SINGING) And Tennessee blues
- We wanna share our stories, just like Luke Bryan
and just like Morgan Wallen.
- Woo! Woo, woo!
[applause]
- And the thing that we have working in our favor
that our predecessors did not is the internet and streaming.
You still need country radio, but the music is getting
out directly to the fans.
And for that, I think we all can be extremely grateful,
because I know for me, I wouldn't have a career anymore
if it weren't for that.
- I know Beyoncé has an incredible, glittering resume,
but the deep relationship with the fans is the true accolade.
We revere her like a queen, and we
will follow her to wherever she wants to go
and whatever she wants to make.
OK, "Jolene" is next, one of the monsters of this album.
I love that she takes "Jolene" and makes it her own.
- Dolly Parton, she's been saying
forever that she would love to hear Beyoncé sing "Jolene."
- (SINGING) Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
- And, like, I think it honors the original song--
- (SINGING) Please don't take him just because you can
- --while putting Beyoncéness into it.
- (SINGING) I'm still a Creole banjee bitch from Louisianne
Don't try me
- Oh, my god.
Like--
- We love you. - We love you.
- We love you, Beyoncé.
Thank you so much for everything
you did for music industry.
- I think whenever Beyoncé enters into a conversation,
through no fault of her own, I think it automatically takes
all the air out of the room.
Like you automatically are going to look at the unicorn.
Like, you know what I mean?
And so, I've seen people say some really hurtful things,
like that she is the reason Black
people are in country music.
And it's like we've been working
at this for a very long time.
And I don't think it's her intention.
But yeah, I do think that some of it
does take the attention away.
- I do have a fear that this moment
could take attention away from women
of color in country music.
Now, that said, there has been some data that that's
actually not the case.
- Beyoncé's new album, Cowboy Carter,
has boosted streams for Black Country artists on Spotify.
- I've often said in a lot of interviews
that it would take Beyoncé putting the banjo on her song
to, like, blow this up, right?
Turns out that that was kind of right
because that has really blown everything kind of wide open
and given a spotlight from more mainstream sources.
But my question is, what happens going forward, right?
We can't just go, oh, it's done.
Yay!
Because like, you know, when the dust is settled
and the next record comes out, then what happens?
- To all the record labels, every radio station,
every award show, my hope is that we're more open to the joy
and liberation that comes from enjoying art
with no preconceived notions.
[cheering]
- This is a gigantic moment for Black people
who live in the country space.
Beyoncé is just here, and she's out.
But Tanner Adell lives here.
Willie Jones, Rhiannon Giddens live here.
So she's absolutely changing the lives of some of the people
who already lived in this world.
[guitar playing]
- When I look at my career now, I'm more than blessed
because I'm in my skin.
It's going to get better.
A whole lot better.
It's gonna take love and appreciation of all kinds
and all colors of country.
(SINGING) Yeah, and I've been used to changing
You can feel it in the song I'm singing
Between the laughter and tears
All my life, I've been shifting gears
All my life--
- I've just got invited to make my debut at the Grand Ole Opry
this summer.
(SINGING) When I close my eyes at night
Then I awaken to light
The money I made
The Grand Ole Opry is a rite of passage for a country artist.
(SINGING) I want to live
I want to live
It is also an opportunity to get
in front of one of the largest country audiences in the world.
(SINGING) I'm gonna drive in my car
I'm gonna go to the store
I'm gonna go for a run
Then I'm gonna come right back home