Beyoncé's “Texas Hold ‘Em” hits no. 1 on Billboard country chart
Beyoncé has once again made history as the first Black female artist to have a No. 1 country song, Billboard announced Tuesday.
Beyoncé has once again made history as the first Black female artist to have a No. 1 country song, Billboard announced Tuesday.
Just more than a week after being released, “Texas Hold ‘Em” topped Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart at No. 1 and “16 Carriages” sat at No. 9. The R&B and hip-hop icon and native Texan is reclaiming a genre that scholars say has roots in Black instruments and music traditions, yet has historically excluded Black artists, especially Black women.
The two tracks, released Feb. 11, were announced during a Super Bowl commercial in anticipation of the release of Beyoncé’s upcoming album — a sequel to her 2022 album “Renaissance” — to be released in March. She is also the first woman to top both Billboard’s Hot Country Songs and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs since the lists were created in 1958, Billboard reported Wednesday.
Beyoncé is not the first Black female country singer, but her newfound success in the country charts spotlights a genre that has historically been predominantly white and male. In recent decades, women of color have set out to forge a path for artists who look like them in the country genre, a genre with strong roots in Black musical traditions.
“Black people and brown people have always had an interest in country music — they’ve always played it and always enjoyed it,” Amanda Marie Martinez, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told NBC News in 2020.
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