Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Country music is on a roll. Sales figures are up by 67 per cent so far this year in the UK. One reason is Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, led by its chart-topping hoedown “Texas Hold ’Em”. Another is one of the guests on her album, the Virginian singer Shaboozey. His whiskey-chugging single “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is an international hit. In the US, it succeeded “Texas Hold ’Em” as number one in Billboard’s country chart, the first time that Black artists have topped it in successive weeks.Beyoncé’s move into the mainly white, at times Maga-adjacent world of country has occasioned much discussion about Black musicians’ involvement in the genre. Its gatekeepers are zealous in how they enforce its boundaries. There have been accusations of racial bias. Lil Nas X has spoken of his frustration that his country-rap megahit “Old Town Road” was removed from the Billboard country chart in 2019 because it was judged to lack “elements of today’s country music”.The issue of race isn’t explicitly mentioned by Shaboozey in his new album Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going. The singer, real name Collins Obinna Chibueze, instead presents us with an unabashedly populist set of songs in various country formats. One moment he’s doing a country-rap crossover, the next he’s drawling about hard liquor and fast women in the style of a bro-country singer, then he’s emoting a country-pop ballad. He does all this without self-consciousness or any sense of friction.His stage name Shaboozey derives from mispronunciations of his surname. (His parents came to the US from Nigeria.) Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going is his third album. Country and western motifs are laid on with a trowel, including more neighing horses than the Kentucky Derby and lots of Ennio Morricone-style whistling. But the singer saunters through his wild-west theme park with personable ease.“Horses and Hellcats” is a country-trap fusion in which Shaboozey, channelling the croaky vocals of Atlanta rapper Future, singsongs about skipping out for Tennessee on the back of a Palomino. It’s not “Old Town Road”, but it works. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is a catchy line dance with interpolations from a 2004 rap hit, J-Kwon’s “Tipsy”. “Anabelle” is a country-rock plodder in which Shaboozey hits the booze to get an ex-lover out of his head. In true country style, tears are the only mixer for his whiskey.★★★☆☆‘Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going’ is released by Empire
