Fascinating history of country music: In the 1920’s, the recorded music industry hit a slump, and started to recognize the lucrative potential of sales to Black Americans. They created a category called “race records,” which lumped together jazz, blues, R&B, and other genres which came out of Black communities. This was in contrast to “country music,” which originally grew out of white folk traditions, but appropriated other genres to expand to country&western, country swing, and later borrowed from rock 'n roll and pop. So it wasn’t at all unprecedented for country music to borrow rap and hip-hop elements in recent decades.
In brief, country music isn’t so much a genre as a code word for “white people music.” Once you know this, the hysterics over Lil’ Nas X, or Beyoncé, making country songs makes a lot more sense.
Fascinating history of country music: In the 1920’s, the recorded music industry hit a slump, and started to recognize the lucrative potential of sales to Black Americans. They created a category called “race records,” which lumped together jazz, blues, R&B, and other genres which came out of Black communities. This was in contrast to “country music,” which originally grew out of white folk traditions, but appropriated other genres to expand to country&western, country swing, and later borrowed from rock 'n roll and pop. So it wasn’t at all unprecedented for country music to borrow rap and hip-hop elements in recent decades.
In brief, country music isn’t so much a genre as a code word for “white people music.” Once you know this, the hysterics over Lil’ Nas X, or Beyoncé, making country songs makes a lot more sense.