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    Black Country Musicians Are Still Stars Even With Being Barred

    By 010 Mins Read
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    Once again, the CMAs have shut out Black artists, and people are spending time being shocked. Blackness, but it currently is not, and it is the last American frontier of melodic racism. So the f*ck what if the CMAs won’t honor a Black artist, they are not honorable, nor are they people whom they choose to honor. Morgan Wallen, who won the coveted “Entertainer of the Year,” title was also caught up in a scandal back in 2021 when he was caught on camera unironically using the inward.

    His music sales spiked after the footage leaked, and he was on a sold-out tour the next year despite being dropped from his label. He has also been arrested multiple times, including felony charges. 

    When Beyonce decided to make a country album after feeling slighted at the CMAs in 2016, like any other Beyonce album, it was an overwhelming success, but it failed to garner any CMA nominations. This year’s host, Luke Bryan, who is also a country musician, essentially stated that Beyonce needed to ingratiate herself with the other country music artists and “come to an award show and high five us.”

    He must have forgotten how she was treated in 2016 at the same awards show.

    Country music is the third most popular music genre, behind R&B/Hip-Hop and Pop. Music popularized by Black musicians makes up more than a quarter of the market share. Country music is popularized by the far-right, not that country music is bad; it’s just objectively not the most melodic; with that said, it has a much broader built-in audience and still is third to a genre popularized by representatives of 13% of the population. Even with the music of Little Nas X, Shaboozey and Beyonce, all breaking records in the genre, that third place probably stings a little bit more. So let it, because you don’t have to high-five anybody to outdo them in record sales. Sure, not every artist is going to be good, but not even addressing Beyonce being Beyonce, Cowboy Carter broke several streaming and chart records and had the highest streaming debut for any album by a Black woman. 

    Excluding someone’s debut country album is one thing, but a debut album that broke records internationally is an egregious slight. F*ck those people.

    At the very least, Cowboy Carter was nominated for Best Country Album as well as Album of the Year at the Grammy’s, even though she was the most awarded artist of all time by 10. Sometimes the Grammy’s gets it right—Lauryn Hill, Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, but sometimes, and often, the Grammy’s gets it wrong; SZA’s S.O.S. did not win any major categories but did well; in the Black ones, of course. Macklemore beat out Kendrick Lamar, which proves that even with being regarded as an institution of excellence for musical recordings, the Grammys are still fallible. A Black person lost in a Black category, who has not only had a better career since but whose losing album was considered a masterpiece. Not to be reductive, because winning a Grammy is a momentous achievement, but white institutions of excellence are not always excellent, and confirming them as the institutions most- deserving of Black reverence is inherently centering the opinions of the overwhelming white voting body and presenting them as the most valid, which is especially problematic concerning Black art. 

    Their mistakes and lack of equity should clearly show that they should not be the standard, but that’s not the way the world works, and they are the standard.  

    The pervasive culture of country music is love songs for Trump supporters. I am absolutely in favor of Black people exploring multiple genres of music, especially genres with Black notes all over the sheet music. Still, at the end of the day, country music is so far removed from those Black origins and is a hellscape for people who are hellbent on excluding themselves from Black people and giving them airtime they normally wouldn’t have from a Black audience only benefits them. We are giving the Country Music Association more clout than they deserve.

    Hell, this article is doing that, too.

    It’s not that they even mind the contribution of Black music. Hell, Chris Stapleton’s music is so blues-heavy that it shouldn’t come as a shock he was accused of appropriation. Luke Combs’ biggest hit was written by a Black queer woman, Tracy Chapman. Jelly Roll, who has previously called out racism, was seen eagerly greeting Donald Trump at a UFC on Nov. 16; so much for caring about racism. Stapleton, Combs, and Jelly Roll, along with Morgan “Inward” Wallen, were all nominated for Entertainer of the Year.

    You know who else the CMAs did decide to honor?

    They honored Toby Keith, who died last year. His 2003 song “Beer for My Horses” references lynchings; while most lynching victims were Black, he also makes reference to Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched for the suspected murder of a 13-year-old girl and is widely believed to have been wrongfully convicted. His arrest sparked a wave of antisemitism in Georgia during the early 20th century. As well as other coded language throughout the song. Not saying that Black people should not reintegrate country music, but that does not mean run to the CMAs for validation in the category. Non country music stars have their faults and are still award recipients, it is an unfortunate truth, but whistling dixie, far too often, sounds like racist dog whistling. 

    There are non-white musicians that award shows acknowledge who are pieces of shit, but that does not mean White pieces of shit are better. They are not honoring good people, so why seek their honor?

    If making a Country album gets Beyoncé wants to get more fans, I say, more power to her, but dedicating months and even years to a music genre because they pissed you off, sounds poetic, but she has a legion of fans in the R&B genre who would’ve been just as supportive of another R&B album. Hopefully, smashing records in the genre is good enough because while Beyoncé may literally be one of the most powerful women in the world, being Beyoncé isn’t going to stop the CMAs from being racist. Breaking down barriers is so important, and if nothing else, her album elevated the profiles of Black country music artists Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, Tiera Kennedy and Shaboozey, a biracial Black and white, and four Black artists, respectively. 

    It took Cody Johnson 18 years to win ‘Album of the Year’ at the CMAs. During the acceptance speech, his producer, Trent Willmon, couldn’t wait to take a shot at Shaboozey, who was not even nominated in the category, by saying Johnson had been “kicking Shaboozey for years.”

    Shaboozey and Cody were both nominated for ‘Song of the Year.’  The source of Johnson’s producer’s slight is still unknown, seeing as Johnson was still nominated for a song that never even reached number 1, and the song that did win only went number 1 in Canada. However, the second longest charting song in 2024 was nominated; the song “I Had Some Help,” by Post Malone and Morgan Wallen, spent six long nonconsecutive weeks at the number spot, six… Meanwhile, Shaboozey’s Bar Song (Tipsy) was spent EIGHTEEN.

    It is nice that Post Malone was able to get nominated for four CMAs; he has not reported having to give high fives in order to do so. 

    Anti-Blackness is so pervasive in today’s country music that it has almost become part of the brand. Even some of the most progressive artists have found themselves having to make changes in order to be more cognizant of what message they are sending.  Lady A, formerly known as Lady Antebellum, and the Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, both changed the names of their groups because they acknowledged the racist undertones of their names. Undertones that are so ingrained that they are almost forgetful.  Antebellum is a reference to the South before the Civil War, an era heavily fantasized about by white Southerners, especially in comparison to The Reconstruction Era, a short period of time in the 1800s that saw great advancements for Black Southerners. Dixie is a reference to the South.

    The name Dixie is derived from the Mason-Dixon line, the geographical line that denoted slave versus free states, with southern states being the Dixie states, of course. Racism is so much of the brand that country music and reverence for the Confederacy are almost inseparable, even for the good guys.  Continuing to support and amplify Black country singers is important, but what other music genre are you likely to see Confederate flags freely flying at festivals? After this last election, Black women threw their hands up and refused to do more to help others, and who can blame them?

    Part of that divesting should also be from entities like the CMAs. Country music is the music for the second America in “There Are Two Americas.”

    Black people have always been part of country music listenership, there is always going to be an undeniable song in the genre, sometimes so undeniable that after 18 weeks on the top, it is still denied but when is the last time you’ve heard someone say, “turn on that George Strait,”?

    Beyoncé solidified herself as a legend ten years ago; she does not need to be included in the Country Music Awards to make the largest country music album of the year because, clearly, that is what happened. She does not even need the validation of the Grammy’s because anyone with two sharp neurons to rub together would know that whether you are a Beyoncé fan or not, having won the most Grammy’s of all time and a third more than the next artist behind you and still not winning the most coveted award, says that the system is flawed—and while Beyoncé may be one to love flaws and all, the irony is CMAS flaws are from their lack of inclusions. 

    Kyla Jenée Lacey is an accomplished third-person bio composer. Her spoken word has garnered tens of millions of views, and has been showcased on Pop Sugar, Write About Now, Buzzfeed, Harper’s Bizarre, Diet Prada, featured on the Tamron Hall show, and Laura Ingraham from Fox News called her work, “Anti-racist propaganda.”. She has performed spoken word at over 300 colleges in over 40 states. Kyla has been a finalist in the largest regional poetry slam in the country, no less than five times, and was nominated as Campus Activities Magazine Female Performer of the Year. Her work has been acknowledged by several Grammy-winning artists. Her poetry has been viewed over 50 million times and even used on protest billboards in multiple countries. She has written for large publications such as The Huffington Post, BET.com, and the Root Magazine and is the author of "Hickory Dickory Dock, I Do Not Want Your C*ck!!!," a book of tongue-in-cheek poems, about patriarchy....for manchildren.

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