I love Shaboozey. He’s a first-generation American, born and raised in Virginia! His song “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is one of the biggest hits of the year, dominating multiple charts and becoming one of the “songs of the year.” He received six Grammy nominations, including noms for Song of the Year, Best Country Song and Best New Artist. He also received two CMA nominations, and he was invited to perform at Wednesday night’s CMA awards show. Here’s his performance:
It was nice – he seemed nervous. He had good reason to be nervous – country music fans are notorious gatekeepers when it comes to Black country artists. The whole reason why Beyonce made Cowboy Carter is because she was disgusted by how the country music industry treated her when she performed “Daddy Lessons” with the Chicks in 2016. Eight years later, the response to Shaboozey showed that nothing has changed. From Rolling Stone’s “Shaboozey Deserves More Than What The CMA Awards Gave Him – Including An Apology.”
Shaboozey was on a high coming into the 2024 CMA Awards, having received two nods in his debut year as a nominee and a performance slot to showcase a mix of his breakthrough hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and his recent single “Highway.” But what should have been a night of celebrating country — a genre in which the 29-year-old musician has been a history-making force for the duration of the year — was plagued by microaggressions being played off as jokes. Shaboozey didn’t get the chance to take the stage in acceptance of either of his nods — New Artist of the Year or Single of the Year — but the singer-songwriter was offhandedly mentioned in the winning speech from a category he wasn’t even nominated in.
When Cody Johnson took the stage to accept the Album of the Year trophy for his record Leather, his producer Trent Willmon approached the microphone with a dull joke, quipping: “I got to tell you, this is for this cowboy who’s been kicking Shaboozey for a lot of years.” Social media users have noted that Willmon could have simply been making a play on the phrase “kicking booty.” However, that doesn’t necessarily explain why he felt comfortable playing word games with the name of one of the night’s two nominated Black acts.
Shaboozey was born Collins Obinna Chibueze to Nigerian immigrant parents. Growing up in Woodbridge, Virginia, he obtained his nickname-turned-stage name from a high-school football coach who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) properly pronounce his surname. “Hearing your name [mispronounced] during attendance was always a thing; you felt like you had to make it easier for everyone else to understand,” Shaboozey told Billboard earlier this year. Willmon’s unprovoked jab at the artist highlights the unfortunate normalization of Black culture being diluted in order to make it more accessible to people who won’t make a conscious effort to learn anything about it.
In the particular instance of the CMA Awards, poking fun at Shaboozey’s name had been normalized all night. During the opening monologue, co-host Peyton Manning segued from one sentence into another using the exclamation “Holy Shaboozey!” as a bridge between the two. Then, co-host Luke Bryan riffed on the success of “A Bar Song,” joking: “In Nashville, that’s what we call a Sha-doozey.” Manning promptly, and fittingly, responded: “That does not sound right at all.” Notably, each artist mentioned in the segment was shown on camera in the audience moments later. Shaboozey was not.
Later in the night, while introducing Shaboozey ahead of his performance, Bryan made another off-hand remark. Manning had just mentioned the reign “A Bar Song” has experienced at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, where it has spent 17 nonconsecutive weeks, when the artist added: “His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Shaboozey, must be so proud.”
I saw the clip of Trent Willmon’s speech and it felt menacing and racist. The endless jokes about his stage name… like, does no one understand the backstory? RS explains it – it is an anglicized nickname of his Nigerian surname. I would maybe – MAYBE – understand one joke about his name, so long as it was, like, a dad-joke about getting shaboozey’d at the CMA after-party. But the intention of all of these racial microaggressions was to otherize and menace him.
Shaboozey was nothing but gracious in the face of all of that CMA mess. He posted: “Couldn’t have ever in my wildest dreams imagined being here. I’m grateful for all of it…Win or lose, I’m blessed by something or someone that has a power beyond my understanding…I’m here today hopefully living in my purpose and if my music makes even the tiniest positive impact in someone’s life I can die with a smile. Country music changed my life and I’m forever grateful to it and for it.” He also posted this lovely photo with a direct message to Trent Willmon:
Ain’t nobody kicking me! pic.twitter.com/KLiMpBazBk
— Shaboozey (@ShaboozeysJeans) November 21, 2024
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.