Is it a race issue, or a gender issue?

My last post got my gears going about country music and African Americans. Earlier I talked about the difference between a white person switching musical industries and a black person switching musical industries. Here, though, I want to unpack that more and look at two black people switching musical industries, one a man, and one a woman…

I know that Beyonce did not even attempt to switch industries into country music, but the uproar from her guest appearance at the CMAs would lead one to believe that she had. In an earlier blog post I mentioned that I felt it was strictly racially based that Beyonce was so harshly resisted in a guest appearance, while other (white) artists are seemingly more free to dabble in different genres as they please. But what about another black artist who did fully transition from a rock band to country music. Darius Rucker was the lead singer of semi-successful rock band, Hootie & the Blowfish, founded in 1986.

The band has released five studio albums with him as a member, and charted six top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. About 15 years later he released an R&B album, Back to Then, but it didn’t make any charts. Six years later, Rucker signed to Capitol Nashville as a country music singer, releasing the album, Learn to Live that year. Its first single, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It", made him the first black artist to reach number one on the Hot Country Songs charts since Charley Pride in 1983. In 2009, he became the first black American to win the New Artist Award from the Country Music Association, and only the second black person to win any award from the association. A second album, Charleston, SC 1966, was released on October 12, 2010. So let’s tie this back to Bey! SEVEN YEARS later, more than half a decade before Beyonce’s guest appearance on the CMAs, a black man breaks major borders in the industry and in recognized by the CMAs MULTIPLE times. AWARDED by the CMAs! But the world has an anxiety attack over a woman making one appearance, so is it a race issue, or is it a gender issue? To make another point, Beyonce is not the only non-country artist to make guest appearances on the CMAs, and in fact the show does this quite often. However, rarely with women of other genres. For instance Justin Timberlake, who performed with Chris Stapleton on the CMAs just one year prior to Bey. People adored their show! Both white, both men. So I return to my question. I know it’s a racial barrier. There are obvious racial barriers that Darius Rucker and other black country artists crossed in the industry, but are the barriers for a black man in country the same as the barriers for black women?

#Tabatha