Call Me Country: Beyonce & Nashville's Renaissance (2024)

[bunniefuu]

[music playing]

Beyonc 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 Beyonc'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.

Beyonc, honey,

you need to stop.

How is that supposed

to be country?

That Beyonc

bullshit country song?

[scoffs] b*tch, please.

I think, pretty

clearly, what Beyonc

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 Beyonc!

Beyonc 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.

Beyonc 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 Beyonc.

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.

f*ck 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

sh*t, 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,

sh*t, that's country.

[laughs]

(SINGING) 16 car--

Man, what?

I have always

felt that Beyonc

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

Beyonc 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.

Beyonc 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 n*gro nose

and her Jackson 5 nostrils.

(SINGING) I like my n*gro

nose with Jackson 5 nostrils

These are choices

that Beyonc

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 q*eer 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 Beyonc.

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.

q*eer 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 Beyonc,

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 Beyonc 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?

Beyonc 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 Beyonc 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 q*eer

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 Beyonc.

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,

Beyonc 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 sh**t

It definitely made me

think of that moment,

while I was at the CMAs myself,

to see Beyonc 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 b*tch

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 Beyonc 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

Beyonc's presence.

After the awards, the CMAs

published her performance

on social media

that some people

were using to

denounce Beyonc being

there or for outright racism.

That's right, folks.

Beyonc performed at

the CMAs last night

and is on a mission to take

country music away from us

hardworking white people.

Beyonc 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 Beyonc from Houston.

But here we are.

It wasn't out of the norm

to have someone like

Beyonc 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.

Beyonc 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 q*eer 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 k*lling

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 k*lling 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 g*y.

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 g*y 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 g*y.

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 Beyonc making

country songs must be r*cist,

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 Beyonc 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 Beyonc 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

Beyoncness into it.

(SINGING) I'm still a Creole

banjee b*tch from Louisianne

Don't try me

Oh, my god.

Like--

- We love you.

- We love you.

We love you, Beyonc.

Thank you so much

for everything

you did for music industry.

I think whenever Beyonc

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.

Beyonc'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 Beyonc

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.

Beyonc 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