Can Beyoncé Shatter Country's Glass Ceiling?

‍This piece originally appeared on February 29, 2024 in Sound Signal, our biweekly newsletter that identifies emerging artists, scenes, and trending tracks, crafted by the world's best writers and curators. Sign up here to never miss our take on what's next in music.

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Last year was marked by country music’s resurgence on the charts and, with it, renewed discourse over racism in the genre. Yet, for a long time, listeners and industry professionals have excluded Black musicians from the genre.  But country music is rooted in Black music. The banjo comes from the West African lute, melodies are reminiscent of hymns sung by Black ministers, and Ray Charles’ popularized the integration of blues in the mainstream.

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Despite pop artists being genre agnostic, country classifications remain rigid: Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” topped the Billboard Hot 100, but was removed from the country charts, and Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons” was excluded from the country categories of the 2017 Grammys.

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Seven years later, Beyoncé is now the first Black woman to top Billboard’s Hot Country Charts with “Texas Hold ‘Em.” The song is one of two country-pop singles that she has released ahead of her forthcoming album, Act II, which critics speculate will celebrate Black artists’ contributions to country music, much like the first project in the series did with Black queer artists’ influence on dance music.

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Beyoncé’s country era gives Black artists permission to make country music and be influenced by it. Rising Virginia native Shaboozey's "Annabelle" has reached over 200K YouTube views in two weeks. His 2022 project Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die got cosigns from Diplo and Timbaland. He says his mission is to show the parallels between hip-hop and outlaw music, as both are made by “groups of guys getting together to fight for what they believe in or they’re just trying to survive.” Dolly Parton’s 1973 hit “Jolene” even travels in rap and R&B audiences on TikTok. DajshaDoll’s interpolation of the song—which Sony has now removed from streaming platforms—opted for a more militant way to handle a mistress, while NYA’s sultry performance (2.3M views) reimagines the classic as if it were performed by SZA.

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As Santi Elijah Holley put it, Black country is not a fad, it’s a legacy. Black artists have always influenced the genre. Today, they’re continuing to do so by mixing in R&B, rap, and trap into existing melodies and storytelling frameworks. It’s a new kind of nostalgia, one based in the history of Black innovation, instead of a racist past.

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