Beyoncé tops Billboard country chart with genre debut “Texas Hold ‘Em”

“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.

Prominent country instruments, such as the fiddle and the banjo, were played mostly by enslaved African people and eventually incorporated into music driven by white Southern artists, according to Martinez, who has written extensively on country and race. Nonetheless, country radio stations in the early 20th century primarily featured white artists who have come to dominate the country music scene.

As the genre and its audience have diversified over recent decades, artists such as Rissi Palmer and Mickey Guyton are advocating for more visibility for Black country musicians. Many hope that Beyoncé’s new country album will redefine in the cultural consciousness what it means to be a country artist.

“Texas Hold ‘Em” gives Beyoncé her seventh unique No. 1 spot on an array of song charts, according to Billboard. (Currently, only Justin Bieber beats out Beyoncé with eight unique No. 1 songs across charts.)

For more from NBC BLK, sign up for our weekly newsletter.