Grammys 2025
On Friday morning (Nov. 8), the Recording Academy unveiled their nominations for the 2025 Grammys — and Shaboozey, one of 2024’s biggest breakout stars, snagged five nods to add to his record-breaking year.
Shaboozey’s five nominations are across several genre fields, including three nods (best country song, best country solo performance and song of the year) for “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” his historic, 16-week Billboard Hot 100-topping smash. The Virginia-bred star also earned a nod for best new artist, while “Spaghettii,” his genre-fusing collaboration with Beyoncé and Linda Martell, reaped a bid for best melodic rap performance. A David Guetta-helmed remix of “A Bar Song” also received a nomination for best remixed recording, though that category only honors the remixer, not the artist behind the original track.
Over the course of 2024, Shaboozey has soared to staggering heights with his Americana-steeped, hip-hop-infused take on outlaw country. With “A Bar Song,” he became the first Black male artist to top the Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs charts at the same time. “A Bar Song,” which cheekily interpolates J-Kwon‘s 2004 single “Tipsy,” has spent a whopping 16 weeks at the Hot 100’s apex, just three weeks shy of tying Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus‘ “Old Town Road” as the longest-running Hot 100 chart-topper of all time. In addition to “A Bar Song,” Shaboozey also earned two 2024 Hot 100 hits alongside Beyoncé: “Spaghettii” (No. 31, with Linda Martell) and “Sweet * Honey * Buckiin’” (No. 61). Early in its run, “A Bar Song” usurped Queen Bey’s “Texas Hold ’Em” atop Hot Country Songs, making the collaborators the first Black artists to earn back-to-back No. 1s in the chart’s nearly 70-year history.
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With a boatload of Grammy nominations to cap off a life-changing year, Shaboozey — who’s currently in Lexington, Ky., assisting Jelly Roll on his Beautifully Broken tour — took a few minutes to speak with Billboard about his latest honors, how he’s celebrating and how this all impacts his approach to making music going forward.
Where were you when you first saw the nominations?
I was on the tour bus. I’m on the road with Jelly Roll right now. I was supposed to be playing basketball with him, but I think he was sleeping on another bus.
Who did you call first?
I probably FaceTimed Mike Trotter Jr. [from The War and Treaty] because he texted me first. He was congratulating me as a friend and mentor, he’s always been the best. Then I called my manager. I tried to call Jelly, but, like I said, I think he was sleeping. Then I called my mom and my brother. And then Abas [Pauti], my other manager. And then Teddy Swims called me! He was crying. I feel like he definitely got snubbed [for more nominations]. He’s just got one of the greatest voices, such a classic, timeless voice. Honestly, if he got nominated [more], it would’ve been the “Teddy Swims Appreciation Show”! [Laughs].
What do you normally do to celebrate with family and friends?
The last time I actually went to my house was probably in March, a couple of days before Cowboy Carter came out. It’s funny because I was at Tommy Richman’s birthday party. The [Cowboy Carter] announcement hadn’t even come out and I was just hanging. I haven’t really gotten the opportunity to slow down and celebrate. My mom has a birthday coming up early next year, so we’ll probably do a big birthday party for her.
Were there any surprises for you looking at the nominations?
I mean, The Beatles AI song. I was like, “OK… We’re doing this?” [Laughs] I felt like [record of the year] would have been a cool one to grab, but I’m super grateful for the six I did get. And that’s not even counting the ones we kind of have our name attached to, like Beyoncé’s [Cowboy Carter] record. It’s a big year for both of us, honestly.
You’re nominated across the general field, country and rap – what does it mean to see your name and work welcomed across genre lines?
It’s bittersweet for sure. There’s a tremendous amount of talent in the country space and there are so many well-written songs that I felt also deserved that look. Country music is not yearning for talent. The beautiful thing about country music — especially some of the people who have been doing it for such a long time – is that so many people could have been out in that category. I heard a song by Sam Barber and Avery Anna that’s so beautiful, Zach Bryan put out an amazing record, Zach Top too. I wish there was a way to showcase everybody, but that’s the nature of awards shows.
You and Beyoncé are now one step closer to potentially being the fifth and sixth Black artists to win a country Grammy. How do you begin to wrap your head around that?
It’s insane, especially to be doing it with someone like Beyoncé who’s such a legacy artist. It feels like I’m on the right track to do the same. I can finally cross this off my bucket list. I can say that I’m Grammy-nominated for the rest of my life. I really believe this is only the beginning.
I’ve learned so much just from doing the tour and doing these shows. Now, with more resources from the label, I feel like I can really get out there and start making music without pressure. A lot of people work to get a No. 1 song. Being able to knock that out at this point in my career, I can start focusing on making the music that really matters to me. Not to say the music I have done doesn’t matter, but I can really get into my artist bag. It’s gonna be really fun.
As you dig deeper into that “artist bag,” what does that look like for you?
Being able to collaborate more, the phone book just gets a little bigger as far as writers, producers and session players you can work with. And the time you can take. My whole project was mostly recorded in producers’ rooms. Some of it was done in Nashville, but most of it was done in my producer’s house in Van Nuys [California] – not the most scenic country landscape! Because of budget restrictions, we didn’t want to make something that would kill our pockets. Now, I have the opportunity to be like, “Do I want to go out to Montana for a couple of weeks? Or Nashville? Or Electric Lady?” Those things seem like more of a possibility, whereas before they were kind of just a dream or afterthought.
Have you gotten a chance to speak with your “Tipsy” co-writers and co-producers?
I talk to them every day. Sean Cook, one of my new producers, did most of the songs on my last project, Cowboys Live Forever, and Nevin [Sastry] did most of the stuff on the one before that, Lady Wrangler. They were the two producers on “A Bar Song,” so it was cool that I was able to connect one of my earliest friends with one of my recent collaborators and they hit it off so well. We all got this together. For them both to believe in me and see past the immediate gain and exposure and remain loyal and put in hours – and I’m really particular, so I be over-tweaking. For me, [I continue working on] albums for a while after they’re supposed to be turned in. Sometimes, producers can suffer from producer fatigue – but in those moments, we made “A Bar Song.”
I hope people learn from that. Don’t stop being creative, don’t stop believing in your ideas, and have people around you who are going to help and encourage you to explore your ideas and not kill them.
“A Bar Song” is two weeks away from tying the all-time record for most weeks atop the Hot 100. Are you guys gunning for it or just letting the song do what it does?
This is kind of crazy how much the song carried on its own. We don’t even do anything and it’s like, “Hey, you’re aiming for a 17th week now!” [Laughs] Some people will do a couple of different remixes or they’ll do the instrumental and the a cappella and all these different versions. We reached out to a lot of people trying to do a remix early on, but we couldn’t find something that made sense. For “A Bar Song” to still be doing what it’s doing is insane.
Other than “A Bar Song,” what song would you most want to perform at the Grammy telecast?
There’s the “Good News” record we’ve been teasing, that would be a cool one to perform at the Grammys – especially if it performs the way we expect it to and if it really resonates with people. But everybody wants to get tipsy right now! I got asked to come out at the World Series, and I had just did the Boston Celtics. We’re doing CMAs too. We’ve been telling people that we want to showcase and highlight other songs as well, and everyone’s been very receptive.
What do these Grammy nominations mean to the Shaboozey who first moved out to LA a decade ago to pursue music?
It’s just amazing. A dream come true. The Grammys are the pinnacle of music. It’s something you watch from the outside. There are songs about the Grammys, people talk about them all the time. I’m pretty sure I’ve been mentioning going to the Grammys or winning a Grammy since I was 17 years old. To now have another thing ticked off my bucket list is a blessing. The most exciting part about all this is being able to listen to your music and be like, “Damn, I’m not capping anymore. I really got that Grammy that I talked about in that song I made in 2014!” Manifestation, man. Now I can really talk my sh–!
It’s cool to see that there’s still hope out there for new artists. A lot of the nominated artists, we see those names every year. It’s cool to have new names there. I want to make sure this isn’t the last time my name is there.
How many shots are you taking to celebrate these nominations?
Oh man, we’ll see! When I see Jelly Roll tonight, it’s gonna be all love. We’ll get out there and have a great time. I be taking shots every day now, this whole tour has been one big party.
In 2024, pop artists made their love for country music known, and, today, Grammy voters made their love known for those efforts.
Pop and R&B stars dominated the country Grammy nominations, including Beyoncé, who was the only artist to receive a nod in all four country categories. (Bey is the leading artist across the board with a record 11 total nominations for her country-influenced Cowboy Carter album.)
Post Malone also earned two country nominations, while Noah Kahan received one. Genre-blending Shaboozey, whose “A Bar Song (“Tipsy”) became the first song to go top 10 (and ultimately top three) on all four of Billboard radio airplay charts — Country Airplay, Pop Airplay, Rhythmic Airplay and Adult Pop Airplay — received two.
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Even though country radio ignores her (and vice versa), country voters remain understandably infatuated with Kacey Musgraves — who earned three nominations, including for country album, solo performance and song. Jelly Roll, Morgan Wallen and Chris Stapleton are the only artists who primarily consider themselves country (and are embraced by country radio) to receive more than one country nomination.
It’s worth noting that this is the first time that two Black artists have been nominated in the best country solo country performance category since its formation in 2012 (it combined the previous genre-designated solo performances). In 2021, Mickey Guyton was the first Black artist nominated in the category. Other than Beyoncé and Shaboozey, voters in the country categories ignored a number of non-crossover Black artists who released lauded music this year, including Brittney Spencer, Guyton and Kane Brown.
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If it weren’t for Beyoncé and Shaboozey, country music would have been mostly locked out of the main four categories: album, record and song of the year and best new artist. Beyoncé is represented in album, record and song of the year, while Shaboozey is nominated for best new artist and song of the year.
This is an ongoing issue with the Grammy nominations and one that the Academy is working on by trying to up votership in the country community — but the numbers are just very rarely in country music’s favor to land slots in the all-genre categories.
For the last 10 years, and not including today’s nominations, only four country artists have received album of the year nominations (and that’s including more Americana-leaning artists, like Sturgill Simpson and Brandi Carlile) and there has only been one winner: Musgraves for Golden Hour in 2018. Only two country songs have received nominations for song of the year, and none for record of the year. Best new artist has fared the best, with eight artists nomination over the past decade, but no winners (the last country winner was Zac Brown Band in 2010). Song of the year goes to the songwriters, so the shutout remains all the more baffling — since for the past two years, two predominantly country songwriters have received two of the five slots in the songwriter of the year, non-classical, category. Shout out to Jessi Alexander and Jessie Jo Dillon.
The relative shut-out in the big four categories remains for 2025, even while country enjoys a surge in popularity and dominates the Hot 100, with such titles as Post Malone and Wallen’s “I Had Some Help,” Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em,” Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and Wallen’s “Love Somebody” spending more than half the year combined at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
Speaking of Wallen, he remains a third rail for Grammy voters. He finally received his first ever Grammy nominations this year for “I Had Some Help” with Malone, but the undeniable hit was locked out of song and record of the year and relegated solely to the country categories. (The Grammys’ more than 12,000 voters can all vote in the main four categories, but then are limited to 10 categories across three genre fields in an attempt to make sure voters stick to their areas of expertise when casting their ballots).
So it will be up to Beyoncé and Shaboozey to represent country music in the main categories (all of which are presented on air, while country is often relegated to the pre-telecast) on Feb. 2 and maybe Beyoncé will finally get her long overdue album of the year win.
In other noteworthy and happy nominations, country pioneer Linda Martell, the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry, receives her first Grammy nomination at the age of 83 — in the best melodic rap performance category, for “SPAGHETTII,” by Beyoncé featuring Martell and Shaboozey.
Jessica Nicholson provided assistance on this story.
The 2025 Grammy nominations landed this morning (Nov. 8), and two Jamaican powerhouses have earned their first Grammy nods for their own work.
In 2017, Shenseea made waves with a remix of Vybz Kartel‘s “Loodi”; today the dancehall star joins Kartel as a 2025 Grammy nominee for best reggae album thanks to Never Gets Late Here. Released on May 24, Never Gets Late Here serves as Shenseea’s sophomore studio album and features collaborations with Masicka, Di Genius, Anitta, Coi Leray and Wizkid. The album reached No. 4 on Reggae Albums, becoming Shenseea’s second consecutive LP to reach the chart’s top five.
“I was in the office getting my ID done, and I started screaming. The people in the office were like, ‘Oh my God! Who died?’” Shenseea exclusively tells Billboard about her initial reaction to her nomination. “I finally made it amongst the greats, that’s what I first thought. It’s [been] a long road to get here for my country and my culture. Momentum and hype [are] more quickly accepted than quality sometimes, especially in this new generation. For me to even make it here after all I’ve been through from stage zero, I feel like I’m at ten. It’s just the icing on the cake to win.”
Shenseaa earned a pair of Grammy nominations (album of the year and best rap album) in 2022, thanks to her work on Ye‘s Billboard 200-topping Donda LP. She appeared alongside Roddy Ricch on “Pure Souls,” which reached No. 52 on the Billboard Hot 100. “I told myself I would not attend the Grammys until I get nominated for best reggae album for my own project,” she reveals. “Even when Donda got nominated, I did not go to the awards. [This nomination] means everything to me. I feel like my hard work continues to pay off. I’ve been dreaming about this moment ever since I found out I could sing!”
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If given the opportunity to perform at either the telecast or the premiere ceremony, Shenseea selects “Face Lift (Intro)” — which features her son — as her song of choice. Should she take home the Grammy next February, Shenseea would join fellow JA star Koffee as the only women to ever win best reggae album.
Just a few months after he regained his freedom, Portmore’s very own Vybz Kartel earned his first career Grammy nomination with Party With Me, which was released this spring (May 31) via Adidjahiem Records. For over three decades, Kartel has been a leader in the dancehall genre thanks a near-constant stream of releases and sizzling crossover joints ranging from 2009’s Spice-assisted “Romping Shop” to 2016’s “Fever.”
Earlier this summer (July 31), Kartel regained his freedom after the Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that he and his co-accused — Shawn Campbell, Kahira Jones and Andre St. John — will not face a new trial for the 2011 murder of Clive “Lizard” Williams. Kartel was originally sentenced to 35 years in prison after a historic 64-day trial back in 2014, but he and his co-accused have always denied their involvement in Williams’ death.
The 2025 Grammy nominees for best reggae album are Play With Me (Vybz Kartel), Never Gets Late Here (Shenseea), Take It Easy (Collie Buddz), Bob Marley: One Love – Music Inspired By The Film (Various Artists) and Evolution (The Wailers).
The Grammys return to Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena on Sunday, Feb. 2.
Nominations for the 2025 Grammy Awards were announced Friday (Nov. 8), with the Recording Academy recognizing a wide range of artists in the four dance categories.
The fields were introduced by Kylie Minogue during the Grammy nominations livestream, with the Australian icon last year being the first-ever recipient of the pop dance award, newly introduced to the ceremony in 2024 and now called dance pop.
The dance artists with the most nominations this year include Justice, who clocked a nom for recording and album with their 2024 singler “Neverender” and the album from whence it came, Hyperdrama. Four Tet is also a double nominee this year, in the album category for his release Three and its track “Loved.” Zedd also scored an album nomination for his first LP in nine years, Telos.
Meanwhile Charli XCX make three appearances in the dance nominations, with her club-ready Brat in the album category, the electro throwback “Von Dutch” in recording and the A.G. Cook remix of that same song in best remixed recording.
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See the complete list of dance related nominees below:
Best Dance/Electronic Recording
“She’s Gone, Dance On” – Disclosure
“Loved” – Four Tet
“Leavemealone” – Fred Again.. & Baby Keem
“Neverender” – Justice & Tame Impala
“Witchy” – Kaytranada Featuring Childish Gambino
Best Dance/Electronic Album
Brat, Charli XCX
Three, Four Tet
Hyperdrama, Justice
Telos, Zedd
Timeless, Kaytranada
Best Dance Pop Recording
“Make You Mine” – Madison Beer
“Von Dutch” – Charli XCX
“L’Amour De Ma Vie (Over Now Extended Edit)” – Billie Eilish
“Yes, And” – Ariana Grande
“Got Me Started” – Troye Sivan
Best Remixed Recording
“Alter Ego” – Kaytranada Remix – Kaytranada, Remixer (Doechii Featuring JT)
“A Bar Song (Tipsy) [Remix]” – David Guetta, Remixer (Shaboozey & David Guetta)
“Espresso” (Mark Ronson & FNZ Working Late Remix) – FNZ & Mark Ronson Remixers (Sabrina Carpenter)
“Jah Sees Them” – Amapiano Remix – Alex Antaeus, Footsteps & Mrmyish, Remixers (Julian Marley & Antaeus)
“Von Dutch” – A.G. Cook Remixer (Charli XCX & A.G. Cook Featuring Addison Rae)
In June, the Recording Academy unveiled a flurry of rule tweaks that will be implemented at the 2025 awards. Among these 10 changes, three were directly related to the dance/electronic categories, with a fourth also affecting those categories.
One of the changes involves an award that was introduced to the Grammys just this year, with the best pop dance recording category now being called best dance pop recording. This tweak is not just a matter of aesthetics, but meant to make the category more accurately reflect the well-established style of dance pop music it was created to showcase.
The next rule change involves the best remixed recording category, which has long focused on dance/electronic artists but was never an official dance/electronic category. That changes in 2025, with this category being moved from the production, engineering, composition and arrangement field into the pop and dance/electronic field
After the breakthrough year she has had, Sabrina Carpenter is likely to contend in multiple categories when Grammy nominations are announced Nov. 8. Her latest studio project, Short n’ Sweet, is considered a shoo-in for a best pop vocal album nod and could potentially be up for album of the year. And she could even land a nomination for best new artist — despite Short n’ Sweet being her sixth full-length.
How can an artist who has released six albums be in the conversation for best new artist? Because, while the Grammys set a minimum number of releases an artist must have to qualify in this category (five singles/tracks or one album), there is no maximum. Instead, the Grammys’ rules and guidelines booklet says nominations for the honor hinge on when “the artist had attained a breakthrough or prominence” — and it delegates that determination to a screening committee.
So Carpenter’s potential nomination comes down to whether the screening committee thinks she had achieved prominence as of Sept. 15, 2023, the last day of the previous eligibility year. At that point, the highest she had ever climbed on the Billboard Hot 100 was a decidedly decaf No. 48, for “Skin” in February 2021. She performed on the MTV Video Music Awards’ preshow on Sept. 12, 2023. (This year, by contrast, her medley of three hits that had each reached the top three on the Hot 100 was a highlight of the main show.)
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Megan Moroney is another not-quite-so-new artist whom the screening committee will likely discuss at length. She had a No. 30 hit on the Hot 100 in May 2023 with “Tennessee Orange,” and her popularity has continued to build since: In May 2024, she won new female artist of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards.
Other top contenders in the category this year, including Chappell Roan, Benson Boone, Shaboozey, Teddy Swims, Sexyy Red and Reneé Rapp, more clearly fit the best new artist criteria the Grammys outline.
The rules in this category have changed over the years as the Recording Academy has struggled to strike just the right balance: not too strict, not too lenient. In the past, the academy has sometimes disqualified artists for reasons that may now seem petty; take Whitney Houston, who had recorded a couple of duets prior to releasing her debut album and was therefore deemed ineligible, or singer-songwriter Richard Marx, who had contributed a song to a soundtrack. Other times, the academy has leaned too far in the other direction. Robert Goulet won in 1963, two years after he became a star in the Broadway musical Camelot. When Alessia Cara claimed the prize in 2018, it was nearly two years after her ballad “Here” hit the top five on the Hot 100.
Three past winners for best new artist — Crosby, Stills & Nash (who won in 1970), Jody Watley (1988) and Lauryn Hill (1999) — wouldn’t be eligible under today’s rules. David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash were all already known for their work in previous groups, as were Watley (in Shalamar) and Hill (Fugees).
Perhaps the academy should have just named the award “best new or developing artist” or “best breakthrough artist” to skirt the issue of whether these talents were truly new, but given the marquee award’s notoriety, such a change is now unlikely. Voters are probably stuck with best new artist — along with the yearly debates over who should and shouldn’t qualify for it.
And if Carpenter isn’t just nominated but steps onto the stage on Grammy night to accept the award, well, it won’t be without precedent. In 2001, Shelby Lynne won the accolade — precisely six albums into her career.
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
How do you think my life has been these past few months?” Shaboozey asks with a wry smile.
The 29-year-old multihyphenate artist — one of 2024’s biggest breakout acts — has twisted my question and flipped it back on me, his measured poker face masking the tornado of emotions he’s feeling. There’s no hiding that he’s tired; we’re speaking the day after September’s MTV Video Music Awards, where he snagged two nods (including best new artist), and its star-studded afterparty, where he mingled with the likes of Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter. Some hours later, he went to Brooklyn for his Billboard cover shoot, soundtracked by Zach Bryan and Chris Stapleton. Now we’re grabbing lunch in a hotel restaurant, where Shaboozey has finally settled down with a half-dozen Prince Edward Island oysters and some fries.
The VMAs were just the latest marquee moment in a year full of the kind of highlights most artists dream of achieving over their entire careers. A year in which his appearances on Beyoncé’s culture-shifting Cowboy Carter (on “Spaghettii” and “Sweet * Honey * Buckiin’ ”) were just the beginning of his string of feats. A year when Shaboozey went from a supporting stint on a Jessie Murph tour to his own headlining North American tour. A year when his own “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” notched a historic 12 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100. And a year that could still get even bigger if “A Bar Song” gets likely-looking Grammy nominations for record and song of the year; or if the album it’s on, the Billboard chart-topping Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going, gets album of the year and best country album nods; or if Shaboozey himself contends for best new artist.
At his core, Shaboozey (or Boozey, to his friends) exudes the calm cool of a rebel who always knew his outside-the-lines plan would lead him to glory. Still, America’s favorite new cowboy admits that he doesn’t always “feel prepared for this stuff. You just kind of get thrown in it.”
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With “A Bar Song” — which has racked up over 771 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate — Shaboozey became the first bona fide Black outlaw country star, a status he has been working toward achieving for a decade. The son of Nigerian immigrants, the artist born Collins Obinna Chibueze grew up just outside Woodbridge, Va., the second of four children. Though he spent two years at boarding school in Nigeria, Shaboozey spent most of his childhood in Virginia, including his high school years, when his football coach’s misspelling of his surname evolved into his nickname and now-stage name.
“It could be a little confusing at times,” he says of growing up Nigerian American in Woodbridge, a Washington, D.C., exurb that was markedly more rural in his youth than it is today. “Hearing your name [mispronounced] during attendance was always a thing; you felt like you had to make it easier for everyone else to understand.” Most Black children of immigrants know such experiences (microaggressions, really) well, and some are also familiar with another phenomenon that marked Shaboozey’s childhood: the endless words of support from parents who understood the importance of reminding their children of their power in a society actively trying to strip them of it. “If I’m going to do anything,” Shaboozey — whose surname means “God is king” in Igbo — pledges today, “I’m going to make sure I’m damn good at it.”
Vintage t-shirt, Wales Bonner pants.
Eric Ryan Anderson
Growing up in Virginia — the home of all-time greats like Patsy Cline and Missy Elliott — also meant that Shaboozey was always aware of the intersections between diverse music genres and styles. But first and foremost, he rooted himself in his father’s playlists, where he encountered country legends Don Williams and Kenny Rogers. As a kid, “outside of MTV and BET, I wasn’t getting the specific names of the artists my parents played around the house and spoke about,” Shaboozey says. “It was all just music to me.”
He didn’t just latch on to the music his father played — he was also enamored with the aesthetic of his pop’s old photos. “Every time I saw a picture of him, he was always in Wranglers. He always gave ‘young country guy,’ ” Shaboozey recalls. From Wrestlemania to Westerns, American culture and its archetypes are exported to, and emulated in, nearly every corner of the globe. Still, most media about cowboys disproportionately features white men, which can feel incongruous to those who feel connected to cowboy culture’s actually multicultural history — and it’s for those people whom Shaboozey wanted to create a unique soundtrack.
At 19, Shaboozey moved to Los Angeles — his first time truly living beyond Virginia — with the goal of writing scripts, making movies and recording music. Shortly after, in 2014, he scored his first quasi-viral moment with his piano-trap banger “Jeff Gordon.” (Shaboozey is a big NASCAR fan.) Around that time, he was also delving into the catalogs of rock icons like AC/DC and The Rolling Stones, indoctrinating himself into the school of Prince and studying the folk roots of Bob Dylan and John Prine.
“In that [period of] discovery, I found country music to be the thing that resonated with me in a really strong way,” he says. “Me being from Virginia, me loving the style and the way of life and the things they talked about. It all seemed very peaceful. It seemed like I could be real.” Even more importantly, Shaboozey began to realize that Lil Wayne and Rogers could be complementary, not opposing, influences. Finally, he understood: “This is who I am.”
When Shaboozey first tried to launch a country album, the project bricked. Two years before the release of his 2018 debut album, Lady Wrangler, he had joined forces with writer-producer Nevin Sastry for Wrangler — which remains shelved to this day.
Shaboozey and Sastry met in 2016, and their connection was so strong and immediate that within a month, Shaboozey moved into Sastry’s apartment. Before completing the “more rap-adjacent” Lady Wrangler, Shaboozey decided to put Wrangler to the side because “something in my head told me, ‘The world ain’t ready for this,’ ” he says. In a sense, he was right. Lady Wrangler (released on Republic Records) arrived in the aftermath of “Daddy Lessons,” Beyoncé’s first country music foray that was rejected by the Recording Academy’s country music committee for the 2017 Grammys and that she performed with The Chicks at the 50th annual Country Music Association (CMA) Awards, one of the most controversial moments in the event’s history; and a few months before Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus rewrote the rules of country, pop and hip-hop with 2019’s “Old Town Road.”
“The rap we looked at on TV was always glamorized,” Shaboozey recalls. “That wasn’t the reality for everybody. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t write music in that world. I found country music could teach people that the little things in life are where the value is. Just having a working truck that you can take your girl in to ride to a cliff and watch the sunset is enough.”
RRL leather jacket, Huey Lewis denim jacket, Wales Bonner pants and shoes.
Eric Ryan Anderson
Sastry and Shaboozey have now collaborated on all three of the star’s full-length projects, but it was 2017’s “Winning Streak,” a woozy trap fantasia gilded in Western aesthetics, that helped Shaboozey land a deal with Republic and release Lady Wrangler. The label dropped Shaboozey following that album’s release (Shaboozey is tight-lipped as to why; Republic did not respond to a request for comment by press time), and soon after, the coronavirus pandemic changed the path of his life. In 2020, Shaboozey met Abas Pauti while playing basketball with mutual friends; after the two got to know each other, Pauti immediately offered to move across the country once Shaboozey told him that Virginia was the place he “needs to be in order to be the artist he wants to be” — a display of commitment that inspired the then-budding star to make Pauti his manager.
They remained in L.A., and by the following year, Shaboozey signed to indie label EMPIRE — which had previously worked with Black country artists like Billboard chart-topper Kane Brown — after a successful pitch from Eric Hurt, vp of A&R publishing, Nashville, at the company. “We understood what he was trying to do and we loved it, but obviously, it wasn’t anything that was out at the moment,” EMPIRE president Tina Davis says of her first impression of Shaboozey and his music. “It’s a feeling you get when artists on a [certain] level come into your presence. It’s kind of like the air goes out of the room. His presence was so full and prominent, I knew he was going to go somewhere.”
Standing at around 6 feet 4 with broad shoulders and lengthy wicks, Shaboozey is a dark-skinned Black man who wears his racial identity with pride. He’s a magnetic presence in any room he enters, though not in a domineering way. But his often stoic face can conceal the “manic, creative energy,” as Sastry puts it, that lies behind it — which he harnessed to finesse his sound and style going into his second and third albums.
On Cowboys Live Forever, Shaboozey joined forces with rising producer Sean Cook (one of the talents behind Paul Russell’s “Lil Boo Thang”), with whom he wrote three songs in three days. “In the studio, he likes to ride on music,” explains Cook, who later co-produced “A Bar Song.” “Sometimes he’ll get on the mic and I’ll loop the guitar, and he’ll freestyle melodies and conceptualize lyrics. Other times, he’ll sit in the booth and write the song as he goes; on the newest album, he actually brought in some guitar ideas himself.” With Cowboys Live Forever, Shaboozey intensified his country bent and enhanced his narrative-driven, cinematic soundscapes that straddle hip-hop and Americana-steeped country.
That genre-agnostic approach culminated with “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” 2024’s longest-running Hot 100 No. 1. Written and recorded in November 2023, near the end of the Where I’ve Been sessions, “A Bar Song” — which interpolates J-Kwon’s 2004 smash, “Tipsy,” and was borne out of Shaboozey’s desire to flip an aughts song — didn’t even need a final mix for those who heard it to recognize it as a hit. Pauti, who was in the studio the night Shaboozey recorded the song, immediately texted Jared Cotter, a Range Music partner who joined Team Shaboozey as co-manager in 2022: “We got one.”
For her part, EMPIRE’s Davis was so instantly enthralled by the track that she shifted her attention from getting the album to the finish line to clearing the “Tipsy” interpolation. J-Kwon, whose “Tipsy” reached No. 2 on the Hot 100, was so thrilled with Shaboozey’s country flip of his track that “he was listening to the record for three weeks straight, not clearing it because he thought the song was already out,” as Shaboozey tells it with a glimmer of childlike glee in his eye. Once J-Kwon eventually cleared the track, it primed the path for “A Bar Song” to become the first song by a Black man to simultaneously top Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay — and the longest-running No. 1 debut country single since Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus, Take the Wheel” in 2006.
Although “A Bar Song” dropped after Shaboozey’s dual appearances on Beyoncé’s historic Cowboy Carter, the whistling track was instrumental in helping him secure those coveted features. When Shaboozey performed the then-unreleased song at Range Showcase Night at Winston House in Venice, Calif., in early 2024, the crowd loved it so much that he played it again. According to Cotter and Pauti, in that crowd was one of Beyoncé’s A&R executives, Ricky Lawson, who instantly knew Shaboozey would be perfect for the record Beyoncé was then working on. Shaboozey says he was initially invited only to write on Cowboy Carter; then, Beyoncé asked him to record some verses, one of which included his freestyled outro on “Spaghettii” (with Linda Martell, which peaked at No. 31 on the Hot 100), and he appeared as well on “Sweet * Honey * Buckiin’ ” (No. 61).
The “Beyoncé bump,” as Cotter calls it, spurred Shaboozey’s team to advance the release date of “A Bar Song” a couple of weeks to April 12. “In this world of virality and quick hits, we wanted to be closer [to Cowboy Carter’s release] and be able to capitalize [on the exposure] with what we thought was a hit,” Cotter says. Early in its gargantuan run, “A Bar Song” usurped Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ’Em” atop Hot Country Songs, making the collaborators the first Black artists to earn back-to-back No. 1s in the chart’s nearly 70-year history.
“It just feels great to see a true talent like Shaboozey win,” a representative from Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment tells Billboard. “He has a clear sense of the artist he always was, and now the world knows it. To see him dominate the country space is a win for all those Black artists who have been authentically honing their craft for a long time now.”
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Eric Ryan Anderson
As “A Bar Song” came to dominate the summer, it continued to help Shaboozey notch major milestones. When he played the BET Awards for the first time in June, J-Kwon joined him for a whimsical, saloon-set mashup of “A Bar Song” and “Tipsy.”
“Traditionally, I feel like country music wasn’t really accepted in that space as much,” says Shaboozey, who became just the second Black male solo country artist to play the BET Awards (after Brown in 2020). “I even felt — whether that’s my own insecurity or [self-judgment] — ‘Is this thing really connecting with people?’ as I’m performing the song. That’s my biggest fear… when I’m feeling out of place in this space. But that’s what I want to do with my music: be disruptive and show people that music is progressing.”
Shaboozey and J-Kwon’s performance was well-received — including by rappers such as Skilla Baby, French Montana and Quavo, all of whom gave him words of support at the show or hit him up in the days following. “I love hip-hop; I’m a part of their community, too,” Shaboozey reiterates — and he’s right.
Shaboozey is as country as he is hip-hop, as evidenced by the featured artists he tapped for Where I’ve Been. While Texas country-rocker Paul Cauthen helps bring the house down on “Last of My Kind” — ESPN’s new Atlantic Coast Conference college football anthem — Dallas rapper BigXthaPlug appears on the fiery hip-hop party track “Drink Don’t Need No Mix.” But while Shaboozey could promote songs from this album that don’t cater to country audiences, he doesn’t currently plan to. “Shaboozey is a country artist — that’s what he’s passionate about,” Cotter stresses. “What we’re seeing across all genres is artists don’t need to be in one box. Shaboozey is the first one that’s genuinely both in hip-hop and country music; he can rap as well as he can sing. We’re definitely going to promote that because it’s who he is. It’s not a new thing that we’re trying.”
“[Shaboozey] is a little bit of everything,” Davis adds. “That’s what separates him from everyone else. I think Taylor Swift shows that you don’t have to stick with one genre — you can try them all and push them all.”
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Eric Ryan Anderson
But Nashville and its leading industry players have not been so uniformly open-minded regarding Shaboozey’s generally genreless approach, or his appearance. “They kept wondering if other songs were country on his album or if it was just going to be one song and then all of a sudden, he’s a street thug,” Davis recalls. “I think it’s both [his sound and appearance]. Obviously, if you looked at him walking by and he didn’t have a belt buckle and cowboy boots, you’d swear he was doing something different. I think it’s just the stereotype of what people see, but having those conversations and sharing the whole album made things a little bit easier.” While Shaboozey is acutely aware that he’s “definitely a new artist in [the country] space,” he says he now feels embraced by Nashville — and vows that his “next project is going to be even more country, even more dialed in.”
And Shaboozey has made inroads with the country establishment, including at a pair of country music awards shows. He scored 12 nods at the People’s Choice Country Awards and two nominations — new artist and single of the year — at the CMA Awards. At the latter ceremony, Shaboozey is just one of three Black performers to be nominated, alongside Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter of The War and Treaty. “There’s a weight that comes with it,” Shaboozey acknowledges, adding that Michael personally called to congratulate him — and also to recognize that “Man, it’s just us.” (Significantly, Beyoncé and Cowboy Carter didn’t receive any CMA nominations. “All I know is that she made a great body of work and I know she’s proud of that,” Shaboozey says of the snubs.)
The crossover success of “A Bar Song” has conjured comparisons to “Old Town Road,” another country-rap joint that ruffled more than a few feathers back in 2019 — and Shaboozey has found kinship with Lil Nas X. “That’s the homie,” says Shaboozey, who connected with Lil Nas at the previous night’s VMAs. “We haven’t had deep conversations, but I can tell what’s happening to me now is probably very similar to what he experienced.”
For Shaboozey, the VMAs were a “fishbowl” experience, where he was aware of outsiders looking at Lil Nas and him, waiting for the two to interact and acknowledge how their stories intersect. “It’s like everyone is like, ‘Do they know?’ ” he quips. And while the VMAs are technically genre-agnostic, Shaboozey did feel a bit of a disconnect with the audience. “Love the VMAs, but sometimes it felt like they weren’t there for me, to be honest,” he says with a droll chuckle, noting how some audience members seemed almost embarrassed to cheer for him after screaming for more top 40-facing pop stars. “But there were more Black folks and people working the event that were showing me love, and that’s what it’s about.”
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Eric Ryan Anderson
He knows, however, that these awards shows are all a prelude to February’s Grammys. In addition to best new artist and record and song of the year for “A Bar Song,” Shaboozey will likely contend for best country song and best country solo performance. Should he take home a trophy in the country field, he would become just the fifth Black act to do so, joining Charley Pride, The Pointer Sisters, Aaron Neville and Darius Rucker, who tells Billboard, “We’re fortunate to have Shaboozey in country music.” Shaboozey’s team confirms that it will submit Where I’m From and its songs in the country field, and the campaign includes stops at “the right looks,” according to Pauti, including The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (where he recently performed his new single, “Highway”), a sit-down interview with Gayle King, an intimate L.A. showcase and meeting Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
“I think it’s something for me to bring home to everybody,” Shaboozey muses about his potential first Grammy wins. “This is the peak of the mountain as far as recognition comes. This is a long-standing ceremony, it’s history and tradition, and hopefully we’re able to take it home. That childhood fear of never winning anything is still there. It would mean the world to win one of these things, but if not, the year we had was crazy. If not now, it’ll come. We in the club now.”
“The Grammys are always going to matter to me,” says EMPIRE founder Ghazi, whose commitment to a genreless future brought him out to Nashville years before he crossed paths with Shaboozey. “From being a 14-year-old making my first records to now being a seasoned executive, I never lost sight of that journey, and the Grammys never [lose their] luster.”
As Shaboozey picks at his final few French fries, I take in the man sitting across the table from me, who, though he’s currently relaxed in the booth of a Brooklyn eatery, has more than a little of a classic gunslinger’s gleam in his eyes. When he picks up his final oyster, it feels nothing short of poetic. A few years ago, it would have been borderline unimaginable to see someone like him at the zenith of country music, yet here he is — reshaping signifiers of so-called authenticity and injecting them with the street-smart swagger of the contemporary hip-hop gangster. A distinctly 21st-century manifestation of the spirit of Marty Robbins, channeled through a voice and persona equally steeped in Stanley Kubrick, Garth Brooks and Juvenile, Shaboozey is a lone star — a true outlaw who has effectively rewritten the rules of a land that’s actually his to reclaim.
And like any genuine outlaw, he never breaks eye contact while making plain his message: “I’m just making music I love,” Shaboozey says. “It’s cool being recognized, but I’m making music for a group of people that are usually underrepresented. I’m going to keep doing that. It’s good to be that guy — those are the people who are remembered.”
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
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