On Sunday, Beyoncé caused a social media storm when she announced that she will be dropping the much-anticipated second act of her 2022 album, Renaissance, on March 29.
It didn’t take long for people to speculate that this was because Beyoncé — who was born and raised in Houston, Texas — is a Black artist, and history seemingly repeated itself the following year when Black musician Lil Nas X’s hit country song “Old Town Road” was snubbed by the country music chart.
The signs began to emerge almost immediately, with Variety seemingly avoiding referring to Beyoncé’s new songs as country, instead saying that they have “strong country influences” — prompting heaps of backlash.
He captioned the screenshot: “I requested Texas Hold ‘Em at my local country radio station (KYKC) and after requesting, i received an email from the radio station stating ‘We do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station,’” and it soon gained traction.
Many felt that the station’s response was reflective of a wider issue, with one person asking: “Is it that they don’t play Beyoncé or they don’t play Black people???” Another claimed: “the racism we're about to bear witness to because Beyonce is digging into her country roots is going to be intergalactic.”
Somebody else tweeted: “The racism we always knew was there is revealing itself already and she hasn’t even dropped the album yet.”
Sharing a photo of “Texas Hold ‘Em” in their schedule, they wrote: “Lots of calls coming in for Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ‘Em. It’s coming up in minutes.”