Shaboozey: Bigger Than A Bar Song

In the last few years, country music has become the most popular and fastest-growing genre in the musical arena. With more and more songs entering the all-genre charts and quite a few even topping them, country music has seen an influx of new artists, viral hitmakers and the occasional one hit wonder, mostly funneled to fans through TikTok’s ever-evolving algorithm.

While it’s easy to shrug these viral artists off as a flash in the pan, every once in a while, something – or someone – breaks through the overnight fame and fast-fading fads to become the next big star. That is where we meet Shaboozey.

Growing up in Virginia, he describes his initial interest in music as rather serendipitous. “Country music really came from trying to find a sound that spoke to me... Being in high school and looking for a hobby, I naturally came across it. I wasn’t really exposed to it or had family members that were involved in it,” Shaboozey tells The Nashville Briefing. “It was just something I did as a hobby with whatever cheap recording equipment I could get my hands on. I made songs based off of taking instrumentals and beats off of YouTube, writing and putting them out on whatever platform was available at the time.”

Releasing his first single, “Jeff Gordon,” in 2014, Shaboozey came up during the infamous SoundCloud era, a period in the 2010s that saw rappers like Lil Yachty, Lil Uzi Vert, Post Malone and Playboi Carti find rapid popularity among throngs of fans on the music sharing platform. Still young and green, Shaboozey found hope in these success stories and started believing that the same could happen for him.

“I had people my age who had a similar story to me and a unique aesthetic or quirk that they used to build a huge fan base and community,” he explains. “That gave me a feeling of like, ‘Man, they’re doing this. Why can’t I?’”

Eventually finding his way to Los Angeles, Shaboozey continued to pepper out music, but with the calendar’s flip into the 2020s, his offerings started to evolve more and more into a country-rap concoction that the world had not heard before and perhaps wasn’t quite ready for… yet.

At the same time, in the midst of 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, Shaboozey’s now co-manager, Abas Pauti, had moved to L.A. and the pair struck up a friendship over their shared love for music production and writing. “I ended up going to the studio with him and I listened to this project that he was making called We Ran the Sheriff Out of Town. It was this western, Americana and hip-hop fusion. It was something that I had never heard before. I remember listening to the song ‘When Cowboys Cry,’ which is on his last project and the first project we released together, and thinking, ‘This guy is doing something that everybody probably wishes they can do, but he’s authentic to it.’” Pauti adds: “I was 22 and knew I had to surround myself with this project because when people caught on, it was going to be big.” Shaboozey is also managed by co-manager Jared Cotter who is a partner at Range Music.

Heather Vassar, the SVP of Operations at Shaboozey’s label home, EMPIRE, echoed much of the same sentiment. Recalling her first meeting with him, she shares that “he spoke about music, art and creativity in a way that I had never experienced from an artist before…. He’d been doing this a long time and wanted to dive into the country world more and more. The music that he was creating, the world wasn’t ready for it yet. The first album that we did, Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die, was kind of that bridge to getting us there.”

Featuring genre-blending songs like “Beverly Hills,” “Tall Boy” and “GAS!,” that project gave a sneak peek at what the future had in store for Shaboozey. But his world would change practically overnight come spring of 2024 as music juggernaut Beyoncé released her country record, Cowboy Carter. An album teeming with special guests and collaborations, Shaboozey was the only artist featured twice across the 27-song project with features on “SWEET A HONEY A BUCKIIN” and “SPAGHETTII.”

“It was monumental,” Pauti notes. “It’s one thing to have one record on that project, but to be the only person that had two says a lot about who Shaboozey is in the space. Beyoncé kind of gave him that co-sign of, ‘This is a guy that you should watch out for.’ Her fans are super fans, and I think they fell in love with Shaboozey the same way she did. Then we dropped a nuclear bomb with ‘A Bar Song,’ so Beyoncé was right to say ‘Watch out for this dude.’”

In November 2023, while finishing up what would become his 2024 record, Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going, Shaboozey got an idea to flip an early 2000s hip-hop song into a country smash. “I grew up listening to that music, and there are certain songs that get played at parties that get people so excited. That era of music from the early 2000s is what I gravitate towards because that’s what I grew up hearing on the radio, MTV and VH1,” Shaboozey says, explaining that he wasn’t the first nor the last to have this same idea. “J-Kwon’s ‘Tipsy’ was definitely a big song when I was growing up so I just wanted to do my own take on it.” He interpolated “Tipsy” in his own “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” bridging a song from his past with his musical future.

“It felt like a big record, so we extended the album process to be released in May. We really wanted to give it the best chance it could have and build as much momentum and demand as possible,” Pauti shares. “Throughout that, Beyoncé decided to release an album and blessed us with two opportunities to really prove ourselves. Having all those things happen one after another gave ‘A Bar Song’ all the ammunition it needed.”

As fate would have it, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” all but exploded.

Armed with a treasure trove of vertical content to promote the song on social media, Shaboozey and the team explain that their main strategy with “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” was to get it in front of as many people as possible ahead of the song’s release.

“Overall, I think it was just important to have an audio that was unique and caught people’s ear. Coming off of the Beyoncé album and having all eyes and attention on us at that time, we just had a perfect follow up song,” Shaboozey offers. “We went out and shot tons of vertical videos at a local bar and there’s so much stuff that didn’t even get used from that shoot. The strategy was, before the song came out, really just exposing as many people as possible to the content in a format that kept their attention.”

With millions of user-generated videos across platforms and more than half a billion streams on Spotify alone, the infectious tune has gone on to surge to the top of a wide range of charts across genres in just a matter of months. Topping the Billboard Hot Country Songs, Country Airplay, Country Streaming Songs, Country Digital Song Sales and Digital Song Sales charts as well as the coveted, all-genre Billboard Hot 100 for nine non-consecutive weeks as of this publication, Shaboozey and his “Bar Song” also proceeded to make a fair bit of history since the song’s release in mid-April.

Marking the first time in history that two consecutive Black artists held the top spot on the Hot Country Songs chart following Beyoncé’s ascension to No. 1, Shaboozey also became the first male Black artist to top both the Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs charts simultaneously.

“We celebrate the successes and the history made each and every time, then typically my follow up is ‘now turn it up,’” Vassar explains. “It’s a lot of having fun celebrating, but then continuing to raise the bar to see how high we can set it and see how much history we can make. Our goal is to do a lot of things that have never been done before.”

“We’ve been able to change the industry, break down barriers, change the dynamic and change the landscape. Shaboozey is the face of that, but there’s going to be so many effects to come from it that will change not only country music, but music in general,” she adds. “Being able to face things that have never been done before and continue to break that down is really powerful, just on a human level. It’s really nice to break the status quo and prove that you can operate at the absolute highest level, but it doesn’t have to look the way that everybody says it has to look or sound the way everybody says it has to sound.”

When the rest of Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going arrived, the excitement only continued to grow for Shaboozey as he filled up his calendar with late night TV appearances, festival performances and more. Yet, even though “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is the breakout track amidst the record’s dozen songs, the album is about much more than just getting tipsy. “The rest of the songs don’t sound like that. This is a really vulnerable album,” Shaboozey notes, drawing attention to the record’s impassioned “Let It Burn” and emotive “Vegas.” “I think this rollout helped define and set the expectation because now people who are wondering what else there is can go back and look. There are a lot of other songs besides just ‘Tipsy.’”

Just as “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is the tip of the iceberg to the record. Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going is merely an introduction to Shaboozey’s burgeoning talent. A musical chameleon who finds inspiration in the least likely places, where he’s been isn’t where Shaboozey’s going, and you can rest assured that he’s going there fast.

Article by Lydia Farthing for The Nashville Briefing