Beyonce's "Cowboy Carter" is a spirited tribute to her Southern heritage, a lively album that not only entertains but also educates on the crucial history of Black influence in country music.
The 27-track, highly anticipated record, which is out Friday, is the second act of her "Renaissance" trilogy, a sonically diverse jamboree flavored with strings and pedal steel guitar.
Beyonce has been a versatile showbiz fixture for nearly three decades, but for all the caps she's worn, the Houston-bred megastar's cowboy hat has stayed within reach: Queen Bey has always been country.
But even the influential artist – who has more Grammy wins than any other artist in the business ever – has brushed up against the overwhelmingly white, male gatekeepers of country music who have long dictated the genre's perceived boundaries.
She notably received racist comments after performing what was then her most country song to date, "Daddy Lessons," at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards alongside The Chicks.
And while her first two singles off the album were released last month to chart-topping acclaim and ecstasy from fans, there were also predictable; bigoted eyebrow raises from some circles.
At the same time, news of her album magnified a wider conversation on the long history of Black artists in country music and the persistent racist backlash they've continued to experience in those spaces.
A Texan raised by a mother from Louisiana and a father from Alabama, Beyonce tackled the perceived "controversy" over her full country turn on the track "American Requiem."
The album is rife with socio-cultural nods both in lyric and style, a unified celebration of country-western's musicography and influences that are also grounded in the African American spirituals and fiddle tunes rock blossomed out of.
And "Cowboy Carter" features genre elders in the form of a broadcast from a fictional radio station – a hint at well-documented struggles women and people of color still face getting airtime on country radio – whose hosts included Willie Nelson, country pioneer Linda Martell and the legend herself, Dolly Parton.
In performing a rendition of Parton's "Jolene," – the singer fears her partner might leave her for another – Beyonce recalls her seminal album "Lemonade," which excavated the infidelity of her husband, Jay-Z.
Parton's intro lays bare the parallels in describing "that hussy with the good hair," a direct reference to the 2016 Beyonce track "Sorry."
Also on the sprawling album is a Beyonce cover of Paul McCartney's "Blackbird," stylized with a double-i spelling.
McCartney wrote the 1968 song about the Little Rock Nine, Black teenagers who became Civil Rights Movement icons when they were the first to enter a previously all-white high school in Arkansas, ushering in desegregation in the U.S. South.
