Call Me Country: Beyoncé & Nashville's Renaissance

- Beyoncé is the greatest entertainer of her generation.

This is a person who has a very intense

relationship with a very large body of fans.

- You went to the concert, and you

saw the concert filmed, right?

Three hours, yes, well-spent.

- (SINGING) I wanna house you and make you take my name

I've met so many of my goals, and I just

keep making new goals because I'm never satisfied,

and I always want to grow.

- Well, the highly anticipated second act

to Beyoncé's Renaissance project, Cowboy Carter,

dropped last night.

You guys, oh, my god.

I'm crying.

- She's the first Black woman ever to top the Billboard's

Hot Country Songs chart.

- There is a public perception about country music

that it is a predominantly white genre.

- I mean, I've seen people say things like,

I didn't know that there were Black country singers.

- It's kind of an industry that takes care of its own.

- It has not been a genre that has been

accepting of Black people.

- You often find partisans of country music

saying, well, this is or that ain't country.

- Beyoncé, honey, you need to stop.

- How is that supposed to be country?

- That Beyoncé bullshit country song?

Bitch, please.

- I think, pretty clearly, what Beyoncé

is trying to do is shove open a door for other Black artists.

When I heard "16 Carriages--"

- (SINGING) 16 carriages driving away while I watch them

--I was like, it has begun.

We love Beyoncé!

- Beyoncé doesn't do anything small.

When she releases an album, she rolls

it out and invites the world.

- This is the greatest rollout moment of an album ever.

Beyoncé does a commercial on the Super Bowl.

- The network is crazy powerful.

I bet you can't break that.

I bet I can.

Wait, what?

- All of America is already watching.

- The whole crux of the Verizon commercial

is, look at all the ways that I've

already broken the internet.

Look at all the things that I can do that people

will lose their minds over--

because I'm Beyoncé.

What if I run for president?

What if I'm an alien?

What if I'm an astronaut?

We can handle anything.

And then she says--

OK, they ready.

Drop the new music.

Fuck the game!

What?

What is she talking about, where is this-- what?

Did she just say that?

Did it really mean-- is there new music?

- I was not even watching the Super Bowl.

I was at a performance for a friend

and had turned my phone off.

And as soon as I got in my car, you

would have thought someone had died because there

were like 50 messages.

Have you heard it?

Did you see it?

- Part of the excitement with Cowboy Carter

was the suggestion that this would be a country album.

The fans are like, yes!

Let's go.

We want this.

They love this.

- (SINGING) family live and died in America

Good ole USA, good ole USA

Shit, whole lotta red in that white and blue

- I mean, there's so much red in the white and blue?

It's, you know, the violence that Black and Brown people

have experienced being in America, but not so overt

that it's a protest song.

We're just saying, America, we have a problem.

Cowboy Carter is a political album,

placing herself in country, where we're

not supposed to feel welcome.

- It's really finna get real because you have to acknowledge

her gift and her talent, and then

she's bringing that to a genre that is not used to change.

My love for country music began--

man, I was probably about knee-high to a grasshopper--

put it that way.

I was real little.

It just came out as, like, I was soaked in it.

You know what I'm saying?

Leading my way like Sinatra

And on a bad day, yeah, I got a mantra

Be original, be yourself

Don't worry about anyone else

I grew up in Mississippi on a farm,

born the son of a preacher.

My granddad was a truck driver and farmer.

And the backyard was 100 acres.

They had Duroc hogs, blue turkey, 110 head of chickens,

whiskey stills down off in the bottom.

Now, every show is sold out

To me, I didn't see country as a color, but other people did.

You say you want a country

Well, country is what I'm playing

There's no doubt, I can hold out

- Aaron has been doing this for a very long time.

He's one of those people where it's long overdue for him

to see the success that he deserves.

I have a buddy.

He said, Aaron, I want you to meet this guy.

He was an artist.

He plays at the Grand Ole Opry and everything.

I ain't going to drop no names.

So I asked him where he was from, and he's

like, California.

And I said, all right, I'm from Mississippi.

And he's like, so what do you do?

Rap?

And I was like, whoa, he went for the sweet move.

And I'm like, nah, bro, I do traditional country.

And it was-- and that was it.

He didn't say too much, and he just walked off.

Yeah, so, he's a white country artist,

and he has all this opportunity.

And look at his attitude towards somebody he don't know,

and he just seen a color.

So that gave me more fire to keep doing me,

keep writing what I write, keep living my life,

and don't worry about artists like that.

Because artists like that got it made in the shade.

I ain't got it made in the shade.

- The country music industry has

not done any work to make Black people feel safe in the music.

We have just been so overlooked.

- You cannot be scared of what country looks like.

Country ain't never been a color.

When I first heard the two singles drop, I was like, uh,

shit, that's country.

16 car--

Man, what?

- I have always felt that Beyoncé

has a sort of national personality

where everybody can see themselves reflected.

- (SINGING) Say my name, say my name

When no one is around you

- Beyoncé obviously coming out of Destiny's

Child, an R&B girl group.

- (SINGING) Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, oh, no, no

- The solo career starts, psh, explodes.

(SINGING) Get me bodied

- She's somebody who has never really been beholden to genre

in a way that was limiting to her,

whether that be pop, whether that be R&B. She seems

to move to the next thing.

- (SINGING) To the left, to the left

I write the songs that I need to hear,

and that I feel other women need to hear.

And I'm all about empowerment and the strength that we have

when we unite as women.

- Beyoncé had come to be seen as an artist

for everyone, someone that a lot of white women

could gravitate towards.

- I've kind of broken barriers, and I don't think

people think about my race.

I think they look at me as an entertainer and a musician.

- She would do all of the things

that a pop star has to do.

But when she moves into Lemonade,

she moves into the space where she is reflecting

a world that she wants to see.

- This is a woman who shouted out the Black Panthers

at the Super Bowl.

- It is a notion of, "we have arrived,

and we're taking up space, and we're not going to ask you

for permission to do that."

I think "Formation" was really one of the first times

that people had to stop and be like,

oh, maybe this isn't for me.

The "Formation" video came out at a time when there was

so much commentary happening around the Black

Lives Matter movement.

We have her singing about how much she loves her Negro nose

and her Jackson 5 nostrils.

- (SINGING) I like my Negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils

- These are choices that Beyoncé

is making that relate to her own maturation as a

human being.

Trayvon did not have to die.

We all know the reason why.

- Looking at the way Black people are treated

and standing up for women who have been wronged by society.

- There was a time when a woman's opinion did not matter.