For Love & Country (2022) Movie Script

1
Life itself,
down to a cellular level.
Everything about it is
to protect our being
and push us further.
Nature is about pushing further
and adding and multiplying.
And healing.
A farmer can sow good seeds.
A farmer can sow bad seeds.
'Cause a farmer is not a perfect person.
However, whatever you do plant,
the soil will return to you good and bad,
and everything that's against
that is just against nature.
Despite
playing an integral part
in the origins of country music,
black artists have been pushed
to the margins of the genre.
A new crop of artists are
seeking to change that
and reclaim their place on
the country music charts.
But as Amna Nawaz reports,
a number of black women are starting
to gain traction in the genre.
Congratulations
on going platinum,
first of all.
- Thank you so much.
- Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah, it definitely tripped me out.
I'm still like in that moment where
I haven't really grasped it all,
but I know that it is is
reality and I'm not dreaming.
And last September, the Texas native
continued to make history
when she became the
first black female artist
to perform her song at the
Academy of Country Music Awards.
You're a history maker,
man, like first black artist
to debut at number one.
Since then,
Spencer's song "Compassion,"
which tackles issues of racial justice,
has been streamed more than
three and a half million times.
It's been such a wild ride.
Our first guest has
been named one of CMT's
2021 Next Women of Country.
She's been praised by Rolling Stone,
Billboard, and the New York Times
and could very well be this
year's breakout superstar.
Things are changing.
You know, people wanna
see a different Nashville.
Oh sisters let's go down
Let's go down come on down
Oh sisters let's go down
Down to the river
As I went down to the river to pray
Studying about that good old way
And who shall wear the starry crown
Good lord show me the way
Oh sister let's go down
Let's go down
Come on down
I haven't done a whole
lotta things right,
but I can do some music.
My mom, she was just on board
with it from the very start.
She always told me that God told her
that I wasn't gonna be with her
in Baltimore for a long time,
and she knew it long before I did.
So, I just wanted to do country music.
I fell in love with it
when my friend Keisha down in Baltimore,
my hometown, found me a CD to listen to.
She was like, you need
to check out The Chicks.
Back then they were the Dixie Chicks.
And I just fell in love,
went on this whole rabbit hole,
watchin' all the music videos
and listenin' to country radio.
I remember watching documentaries
on Taylor Swift and Reba,
and they always said the same thing.
You just have to move to Nashville.
When you realize that you have
a passion for country music,
you just gotta get to
where the country music is.
I finally got the nerve and moved here,
and it's been eight years.
I remember feeling discouraged
because my sound was different.
I sound like I'm from Baltimore.
I don't hide that.
I don't got a twang, but
I got a Baltimore accent.
And I bring all of that with me,
because the thing that
I've always wanted to do
is just make the music
I wish I heard as a kid.
When I started listening to country music
when I was 14 or 15 years old,
I quickly realized it wasn't
anybody that looked like me.
And I realized there wasn't anyone
bringing in a lot of the sounds
that I heard throughout
my life, my childhood.
R&B, gospel, I mean even classical.
I love that, rock.
I wasn't hearing that all the time,
and so it may made me feel like an other,
listening to someone else's music.
Honestly, the thing that
brought me to Nashville
was the people.
When I started meeting
people from Nashville,
I could tell that,
kinda the thing that
people always talk about,
that country music was a community.
Nashville is just this
little scene unto its own.
There's this thing where
country music singers,
they go to the grocery store,
they go to the same bars as you,
they go to the same whatever.
So there's this closeness,
this community that really exists.
I think that it speaks to
the culture of country music
in a good way and a bad way,
because there is a level of
nobody wants to shake any feathers
because everything is calm and
everything is kinda the same
and everything has existed in
this way for such a long time.
If we understand the
history of this genre,
of this sound, and understand that
it is as much a part of black tradition
as it is white tradition,
and if we understand black
people have always been here
and have always been a fan of this music,
have always created this music.
But, I think when you're an
artist and you're comin' in,
like it takes a certain kinda mindset,
a special kinda mindset to be like,
I'm gonna start from scratch,
and I'm gonna do that on my own.
I think that sometimes you
feel led to do something,
but you might be scared,
'cause nobody has done it.
Or very few people have done it.
I just had to make a pathway for myself.
I started makin' music
when I was probably like 11 years old.
My uncle bought me a keyboard.
By the time I was about 16,
I was workin' at Sears
in the mall in Memphis,
and I met this guy named
Chris who had tracks.
He said, "Come over here."
And I made my first song,
and that's when I knew for real,
like I knew I had to
pursue this as a career.
I would always go to LA or
Houston or Atlanta, New York.
I met a guy named Courtney Benson,
and I knew the Nelly song.
I'm getting pages outta
New Jersey from Courtney B
Talkin' about a party up in NYC
And can I make it
Damn right, I be on the next flight
Payin' cash, first class
Sittin' next to Vanna White
And I was like, you
Courtney B. from the song.
Courtney was the one
that really helped me.
That's how I got in the
game was just doin' tracks
and singin' hooks for Nelly and Ashanti
and Chingy or Youngbloods.
I grew up in Memphis where Three 6 Mafia
was always in everybody's car.
And that was startin' to be the sound
of all rap music to me.
And I was completely tired of
it at that point.
I listened to it my whole upbringing.
I was livin' in Atlanta,
and I was comin' up to Nashville a lot,
and I was hearin' country music,
and I was really startin' to like it.
I was hearin' things like Zac Brown Band,
records that sounded different
than the country music I grew up on.
So now I'm listenin' to this music
that has this whole band,
guitars, and strings and steel.
Whenever something's bendin'
like the steel guitar,
bendin', it's soul to me.
So I'm like, this has
got soul music to it.
And then I started
diggin' into older songs,
like realizing Dolly Parton
songs were so beautiful
and Patsy Cline songs
that had jazz influence
and all these different influences.
I was like,
the music that I love is all right here.
I could call you a taxi
We could just call it quits
We could just throw
our hands in the air
Act like we don't care
Say it is what it is
Say I can't forgive you
And I never will
Or we could let another
sun come up on our love
And see what time might heal
It's gonna be hard on my heart
It's gonna be hard on my pride
So can we please try
a little bit harder
While we're still here tonight
It's gonna be hard to let you go
Hard not having you around
It's gonna be harder
Harder than we know
If we take the easy way out
If we take the easy way out girl
Please
It's gonna be hard baby
Yow.
Country music.
Well, country music was
somethin' always been here.
So when I think, when I stepped out,
outside the household,
country music's what we heard.
It's country music city here.
When you listen to the songs
and just some of the things,
the struggles, 'cause a
lot of that country music,
if you listen to the
word and they struggle,
and they're just tryin'
to put that perspective
on what they went through,
relationship, with marriages,
all that's tied up with country music,
'cause mostly what they're singin' about,
the past and the present
and how they was able to get out of it.
So my perspective on country music,
I enjoy listenin' to country music,
but I listen to a lot of the words
when I do listen to the songs.
Music is the thing for me that
levels the playing field.
Initially I wanted to be an artist.
My savior all the day long
This is my story
I started doing YouTube
throughout high school.
It didn't really do much.
All the day long
I eventually had a couple
videos that had done well,
but just not anything enough on YouTube
to really push the needle professionally.
And some people were like,
"You could write songs"
"and potentially you could
write songs for people."
I was like, okay, cool.
Like I'm into that.
Let me see what I can do.
And so I ended up going out to Atlanta,
just kinda shadowed some producers.
And that was kind of how
I started to level up
even more as a songwriter.
It was primarily R&B and hip hop,
just 'cause I was in Atlanta,
and those were kinda the
opportunities that I had
based on producers and writers
that I was working with.
But there were some people
within country music
that I felt like were
making progressive stuff
than the country music that I was
being put onto in high school and college.
I liked a lotta Sam Hunt stuff.
I was listenin' to some Kane Brown stuff.
The genre has come a long way quickly.
So I was like, this is a good time for me
to bring some of the influences
and experience that I have
from living in Atlanta
for the past few years
and try to incorporate
it into what's going on.
So I was like, I need to go to Nashville
and see what is really
going on within the genre.
'Cause I'm an outsider in this moment.
So I came out to Nashville
and then I realized,
they're basically writing the same way
that I typically write.
They're just doing it with
some different phrases
and they're doing it with
some different instruments,
but the same stuff that
I would do, my process,
in Atlanta was pretty similar to
what they were doing in Nashville.
So I was like, okay.
This is dope.
I don't have to relearn anything, really.
I was like, I just,
they're just writing songs
based around concepts.
Like there's no nothing that
would allow you to write an R&B
song that would preclude you
from being able to write
a good country song,
because the best versions
of both of those things
are pretty similar.
I think it probably
speaks to the storytelling,
the instrumentation.
Country music is a genre that,
even as it's gotten more popular,
has still maintained this sense of purity.
There's still live guitar.
There's still live drums.
Even now, again, as we get to this hip hop
where there are these country artists
that really incorporate a
lot of these R&B influences
or a lot of these hip hop influences,
you're still probably gonna
put some pedal still over it.
And music is such a wonderful art form
in that it's always pulling
from different spaces.
My earliest memory of music
is hearing my mom's voice
and hearing her piano.
She couldn't express
her love with her words
or with physical affection,
but I could hear it in the way she played.
One of my earliest memories
is crawling under the
piano while she played.
When she was very upset
about things, she would play.
And I loved to hear her, so I would,
I remember seeing her feet on the pedals
and I could see the edge of her wrists
and the edge of her hand.
And that's where I would feel moments
of connection and safety with her
was when I could hear her play.
My mom says I was humming
before I could speak.
And if she was playing the piano,
I would hum with her in the right key,
And I remember humming and singing
to make myself feel less scared.
And that is something that I feel like
connects me really directly
with the black diaspora.
Mmmm
I got myself a secondhand banjo
at a pawn shop in Vancouver.
That kind of opened a whole world to me.
I loved the sound of it,
and I didn't know anything about it,
but I just knew it resonated
for me in this special way.
Hush now don't you wake up
We'll be leavin' that first night
Mama's buyin' you a mockin' bird
To lull you through the night
I met Rhiannon Giddens in 2006.
She was in the Chocolate Drops.
They were one year in.
And I remember just
being like thunderstruck
when I saw these three
beautiful black people
playing fiddle and banjos
and singing these old time.
And I can't tell my daughters
All the things that I've said
It was revelatory
for me to hear black women
singing their own experiences.
Afraid of that bright glory up above
I understood that music
has always been the thing
that helped people survive trauma.
That's how I know how to do it,
is through writing songs
and singing them for people
and trying to connect as much as I can.
Growin' up I was a big
Charley Pride fan, Matchbox 20,
Tupac, Sevendust, Prince, Brooks & Dunn,
kinda just everything.
My music, kind of the stories
I tell through the songs
and kinda how I grew up, where I grew up,
what I liked to wear,
country music fit me better.
I moved to Nashville in 2007.
And 2007
country was still pretty traditional.
Of course I had a few people
at different labels saying,
"Well it wouldn't work."
'Cause I was black or I had
this one dude at a label,
I won't say his name, but he was like,
"Yeah man, I like you, you're a good guy,
"but I'm not sure about
how country music fans"
"would feel about your people."
And I was like, "What?"
I ain't.
I remember after I signed with Broken Bow
my first single went
number one, he emails me.
He said, "Dude, congrats, man."
"I always knew you'd make it."
I'm a straight shooter,
so I emailed him back,
said, "Don't lie to me, bro."
"You told me it wouldn't do.
"You ain't gotta lie."
"You coulda just said
congratulations and kept it at that."
But I feel like it's our job to realize
that there are certain
barriers that are there,
certain obstacles that are there.
And we have to get past that.
And the one way to always
get past it is great music.
If your music's trash, it's trash.
That's just facts.
No matter what your skin color is.
We can only control who we are,
what we do, and the quality
of music we put out.
I grew up in Texas.
My church drove us to see a
Texas Rangers baseball game.
I was in the nosebleed section,
and the announcer says,
"Please rise as 10-year-old LeAnn Rimes"
"sings the National Anthem."
When I heard her sing,
that's when I was like,
I wanna do that.
My grandmother lived
in a really tiny shack
in Riesel, Texas,
and when I would go over to her house,
she would have hanging
on the back of her door
all these VHS tapes of Dolly
Parton and Kenny Rogers
and "Steel Magnolias"
and any Southern movie.
So I wanted to do country music.
Hey, y'all, it's Mickey Guyton here.
I hope you guys are having
an amazing CMA Fest.
This is my first CMA Fest,
and I'm so excited to be here.
Hey guys, I'm Erica Grace
Powell hangin' out at CMA Fest.
One of my favorite girls in country music,
Miss Mickey Guyton, is here with us today.
How are you?
I am so good.
I'm just obsessed with you.
Hey, y'all I'm Mickey Guyton,
and I am so excited to
be hosting the red carpet
with the ACM Awards with
Sounds Like Nashville.
I jumped in blindly, but when
I signed to Capitol Records,
Mike Duncan did call me.
He said that it's going to be
really difficult for women.
He didn't even mention people of color.
And I was thinking, it can't be that bad.
We'll be fine.
I'll be fine.
I've got a great label.
I've got great management.
Like this is going to happen.
And then, reality sets in.
I got questioned at every turn.
It was like you've gotta make sure
that you're really country,
'cause people are gonna think
that you're disingenuous.
And I'm thinking to myself,
I grew up in Crawford, Texas.
It doesn't get much countrier than that.
I was signed because
people loved my artistry.
And it was like they
tried to change everything
and wash everything that made me me away
and put this other person on top of me.
There's this formula on how
to make it in Nashville.
I've followed the Nashville
way for almost 10 years.
It does not work for anybody
unless you are a white, tall male.
Like it is golden for you.
You just follow that formula,
you're gonna have like 10 number ones
and a ranch and your own
label and a bar on Broadway,
like all of the things.
Which is crazy,
'cause there's so many
different people in the world,
and you could be shutting off
so many opportunities like that.
It doesn't just have to be one way.
I had went as far as I
could go in my hometown,
which is High Point, North Carolina.
Please welcome Frankie Staton.
I would just like to say
that I wrote this song because
at the heart of everybody,
they wanna be loved for who they are.
My wish for you all is that
you find that in your life.
I was playin' for the
International Furniture Markets,
which was the industry of our city.
And I would play for people
from all over the world.
Every now and then I'd slip
one of my own original songs in
and they would say, "Did
you really write that?"
"Is that your music?"
Oooh yeah
And they would say,
"You need to go somewhere
where somebody can hear you."
Being a Southern girl
and having a love of all kinds of music
and especially country music,
I thought, I'll go to Nashville.
I was always about the talent
and the music and the creativity.
So at that point I had already been around
all kinds of people from everywhere,
and they seemed to enjoy what I did.
So I didn't look at it
like, oh, I'm a black woman.
Nashville taught me that
I was a black woman.
They made me know that.
They made me know that my
blackness made me different.
I do pose a question a lot,
just to get people to think,
and it's who built Nashville?
Like, who built this place?
I mean, Nashville's a lot different
than what it used to be
when I was growin' up.
But to me, this is home.
There's very few of us
left, original Nashvillians,
kids that went to Metro, MMPS
schools, and stuff like that.
So to me, this is always gonna be home.
If I close my eyes and think about it,
the first thing I'm gonna
see is Jefferson Street.
You know what I'm sayin'?
The first thing I'm gonna taste is
the biscuits at Knock-Out Wings.
My sister went to Fisk.
I went to TSU right up the street.
A big part of music growing up
in Nashville was going to church,
and the choir was so incredible.
You would have these different musicians
that were just world class
musicians playin' gospel music.
And at the time I didn't really have
the same appreciation
'cause there wasn't nobody
tryin' to listen to no gospel
music for real like that.
I'd rather be listening to Ludacris
or somethin' like that, but,
when I look going it,
I realized how much of
an impact it had on me
and how much I value
black music and black
musicians in Nashville.
Me and my father,
we moved from Chattanooga
to Johnson City, Tennessee
back in 2006.
My mother passed away when I was 17,
and we pretty much, just,
we needed to like start over,
have a fresh start in a different place.
I kinda felt this sense of in betweeness
because I was a black girl
growin' up in very
conservative white suburbia,
also dealing with like my
gender and my sexuality.
I was going to East
Tennessee State University.
I was looking through the catalog book
and I came across this class
called Bluegrass Guitar.
And that's when I really
started to understand
my place musically and how
I can contribute to music.
And the fact that my ancestors
were such a pivotal and important part
of country and bluegrass.
Like these are all things
I had no idea of because,
for me, I didn't know if I wanted
to be part of a music
community that, on the surface,
didn't seem to recognize
me as a valid participant
because I was black.
Country music is the music of the South.
It is Southern musical tradition.
And when you think about
the American South,
you gotta think about black people period.
And all of these things that we hear
that we associate with whiteness
were absolutely being done
and really being revolutionized really,
like black people were really
innovating in this space.
There were
times where whites and blacks
would both learn music from each other.
There was like a trade
between the banjo and
the fiddle, for instance.
The banjo coming from West Africa.
Adding that rhythmic playing,
which we call claw hammer,
you're playing melody and
rhythm at the same time.
So that going underneath
these fiddle tunes
created this new sound.
We've got black string bands
along with white string bands,
but white people were put in this bucket
where they create hillbilly music
and black people are over
here creating race records.
The music itself is the same.
The genres are really
just marketing categories.
How do we get music in
the hands of these people?
Warm wipe stomp
And it really is the
commercial music industry,
this idea that now we're
gonna make money off of this
that starts to create that separation.
Once more white people started
learning how to play banjo,
there was this thing
that started happening
in the early 20th century.
The blackface minstrel shows.
And people from all over the country
would go and see these shows.
That's how popular it was.
When you're faced with
being a black person
during Segregation and
trying to find opportunities
to just have some sense of
dignity in greater society.
You are not gonna gravitate
toward banjo or a fiddle
because you're seeing yourself
portrayed so negatively.
Why would you wanna grab a banjo?
If anything, it's let's create
jazz, let's create blue.
Let's create some other music now
that we can have that's our own,
because we can't touch this anymore.
A lotta times, even as
the music starts to shift,
as we see more blues coming to the fore,
they don't even want black people
doing this other stuff anymore.
They don't want the black string bands
because that has been clearly
defined as white music.
So over time we lose the
roots, which is that,
yeah, white people were doin' it,
but black people were doin' it, too.
Every single bit of modern music,
black roots music is foundational
to every single bit of it.
And just as black innovation, creativity
is foundational to blues,
it's just as much so to country.
It's just as much so to folk,
it's just as much so to
any kind of pop music,
any kind of, obviously jazz,
obviously rock and roll.
Like, there's no Elvis
without Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
There's no Hank Williams
without Lead Belly.
There's no, it's like, it's foundational.
And that's the part that
I started to realize.
I don't need to apologize
for being in any space.
I belong here just as much as anybody.
I don't pass the test of the paper bag
'Cause I'm black myself
I picked the banjo up
and they snare at me
'Cause I'm black myself
You better lock your
doors when I walk by
'Cause I'm black myself
You look me in my eyes
but you don't see me
'Cause I'm black myself
Is you washed in the
blood of your chattel
'Cause the lambs rotted away
When they stop shippin' work horses
They bet they own anyway
Ooo
'Cause I'm black myself
Ooh
'Cause I'm black myself
'Cause I'm black myself
Black myself, black
myself, black myself
Black myself, black myself
Black myself
'Cause I'm black my
Black my
Black myself
Country music
is unique in that it is
associated with a city, Nashville.
And that's something you
don't see in other genres.
People come here,
they have a certain idea
of what Nashville is.
They come with their cowboy
hats and their fringe
and their boots.
And they think that that's
how people live here
and that it's a completely white city,
when that has not been
the case in reality.
Bubble power.
- No.
- That was a huge one.
Try not to shake it, though.
I remember when I was
probably like 12 or 13
the "Achy Breaky Heart."
It was the music.
It was the tune that caught me,
and I've always cherished the song.
So Billy Ray Cyrus,
I was a fan of his, when I was younger.
I'm not afraid to say that now,
but I've always loved country music.
I've barely scratched the surface,
but I'm always in the
mood to hear a good song.
- Pop.
- Oh,
Oh, baba.
How you feel about it?
You took my song, but yeah, I was in,
I think second or third grade
when I heard "Achy Breaky Heart."
I mean, I didn't know at the
time that it was country,
because of being so young,
you really don't separate
genres and everything.
But, to this day,
I do know that that twang and that guitar
and the way that he was sayin' his words
were definitely unforgettable,
and that's country in a nutshell.
I think country, for me
personally, me being a black male,
it doesn't really call
out to me, I would say.
It doesn't call out to me.
It doesn't ask me to listen to it, per se,
because I think that a
lot of the years over time
have been catered to
another type of people.
It's tough because country music,
when it strikes the ear it
don't sound like black music.
You know what I'm saying?
A lot of the iconography
surrounding country music,
it's not how we dress,
it's not what we look like,
it's not what we talk like.
We didn't listen to country
music growing up in my house.
We was a jazz and gospel house.
So it was just so strange,
and it's like, everywhere
you go you're inundated with
a ton of country music, and there's no,
there was nothing else playing.
If you're goin' to the gas
station, country music;
you go to the mall, country music;
you go to a store, country music.
Everywhere you go it was
country music everywhere.
If you look at the
scholarship on country music,
it's very well established
how country became white.
But my question was really, okay,
we know how it became white,
but how has that
whiteness been maintained?
Because here we are 100 years later,
and we still think of
country music as white,
probably even more white
than we did 100 years ago.
Historically the country music industry
has really capitalized
on finding a base audience
of white conservatives.
And that is a pocket of consumers
that doesn't exist across
the board elsewhere.
By the late 1970s, as a nation,
the U.S. really took a conservative turn.
The cowboy came back in fashion.
And this was coupled with Ronald Reagan
assuming the presidency in 1980,
and he sold himself as a cowboy.
And in turn, the country music industry,
and the CMA in particular,
really leaned into those associations.
And I don't know about our opponents,
but there's an old
Country and Western song
called "Home on the Range,"
where seldom is heard a discouragin' word.
I guess they haven't campaigned there yet.
You could invite them here.
If you don't, that's just as well.
But they probably couldn't,
they couldn't perform here anyway,
because all they do is sing the blues.
By the 1990s, country music
was the most popular format on radio.
And of course it all
funnels back to radio,
because radio is the
most influential force
within the country music business.
It's across the board,
within the country music industry
for the past several decades
where every pocket of the industry
is invested in a certain type of listener.
It's building on
generations and generations
of only selling country music as a product
by and for white people.
Part of the big reason why
country music is the way it is,
is because of the fan,
the culture around it.
Controversy
over the Confederate flag
hits home here in Connecticut.
You cultivate
whiteness for a very long time,
you're gonna get a certain
demographic of people.
I think individual freedoms,
you don't wanna tramp on that.
Don't tread on me.
There's no denying the
tying in of Southern heritage
to what traditional
country music has been.
I was a day-to-day manager
for a couple country artists
for about nine years.
I mean, I remember goin' to concerts.
You pull in the parking lot
and you see all the Confederate flags,
and those people might
not be actively racist,
but they're at a country music show,
and they feel like that means
that they should fly the Confederate flag.
If you're not workin'
in the music industry
or you don't have a
real reason to be there,
you're only gonna put yourself
through that experience once.
I think all of it
together has just sort of
made this not so welcoming
space for black people.
And so I think that's
why it hurts even more,
'cause it's hard to see
this thing that you love
and work so hard for,
it's hard to feel like
it doesn't love you back.
Even as it sits in the heart
of this very diverse city, the
city that is a third black,
this city with this rich
civil rights history,
Where the freedom riots started.
Where you've got Alexander
Looby's house is bombed
because of the work he's
doing to desegregate schools
to fight for civil
rights for black people.
Where there are four HBCUs in town.
There has been this
constant shift away from
or avoidance of or just really clear lines
between this industry and the
black community that's here.
I am a lifelong resident,
69 years here in Nashville.
I grew up listening to country music.
My mother was a choreographer,
so she always listened to music,
and having grown up
basically on a big farm
and going to hoedowns and square dancing,
I still have the silver dollars that I won
in the square dancing contest
when I was a little boy.
So, country music, two
step, square dancing,
it's what I've done all my life.
I was born in 1952.
Of course, it was a different Nashville.
My first time going to the Grand Ole Opry,
I had to sit up in the top
because it was segregated.
So I never felt that country
music was welcoming me.
And so if I didn't feel
it was welcoming me,
and I've been loving it all my life,
then I can only imagine how people
who don't have any connection
or people who even were trying to get
in the business would feel,
because they weren't there.
So it caused me to dig a little deeper,
to try to get a better understanding.
And the fact is that,
as Nashville was not
welcoming back in the day,
country music wasn't either.
When I moved here, it was 1981,
and it was quite different than now.
There were tour buses everywhere.
Busloads of people would come
into these different clubs or restaurants,
and they would have these jam sessions,
and everybody wanted to get up
and have a picture made singing
on a stage in Nashville.
There was one particular jam
session I was interested in,
was in the Captain's Table.
I studied the marquee and it said
Sammy Davis Jr. had performed there,
and I love Sammy Davis, Jr.
And so I said, I'm gonna be
clean when I walk up in there.
So I come down Church Street one night
in my evening gown with my
little fake rhinestones on,
and the cops stopped me and
said, "Where you goin'?"
I said, "I'm going to the jam session"
"at the Captain's Table."
And he said, "To do what?"
I said, "I'm singin' Loretta Lynn."
He said, "Oh, really?"
"I'm going with you."
I said, "You wanna hear it?"
"Come on."
So my entree into the jam
session was with the police.
And I was the first one there.
I signed up at 11:30 at night.
It started at midnight.
And he just kinda hung
around a few minutes
and gave his card to the manager, said,
"If you have any problems
with her, let me know."
I thought, why would they
have any problems with me?
I'm just here for the music.
I was drinkin' black coffee.
I was the first one to sign up.
And busloads of people came and went,
and they got all them up to sing.
They wouldn't get me up, and
I thought, I'm not leavin'.
I'm staying.
If we have to have a sunrise service here,
I'm stayin' till the sun comes up.
And so I just sat there,
and 2:30 in the morning, they said,
"You know, we don't know this woman,
"but this is a jam session
that's open to the public."
"So we're gonna get
her up to sing a song."
"And her name is Frankie Stratton."
I said, "My name is Frankie Staton."
And I go up there and I say,
"I'm doin' the 'Coal Miner's
Daughter' in the key of D."
And I turn around and tell the audience,
and the place is still packed
at 2:30 in the mornin',
that I came to Nashville
because of this movie,
"The Coal Miner's Daughter."
I love Loretta Lynn.
And I start singin' this song, and people,
I gotta standin' ovation.
They said, "Well, sing another song."
And I sang another song.
And they said, "Well, sing another song."
They came down and said, "Can
you audition tomorrow night?"
And I auditioned the next night.
And the next night, my
name was on the marquee.
Where have you been
What did you do
Did you know I was here
patiently waiting for you
Sometimes you have to stay
when you don't want to.
And I've learned to stay a lot.
I missed you so much
Where have you been
I'm your dream
I'll never give up on you
I'll always be here
I'm with you no matter
If you're happy or full of fear
Can we start working on tomorrow today
Never give up again and
please don't walk away
I'm gonna be here with you
'Til the bitter end
I love you with all my heart
I'm your dream
Everybody say hello to Charley Pride.
Charley.
Welcome, thank you for coming.
You know, Charley,
I always wanted to get
a chance to talk to you.
When I was small my mom and
dad were in the music business,
and I just kinda grew up in it.
But did you always wanna be a singer
from the time you were a little boy?
Or did you just kind of-
- I've sang all my life,
but I wanted to be a
great baseball player.
You didn't make it?
No, just in the door.
Got-
- You made it in the
music business anyway.
I think you're the only
man in country music
that's got four gold albums.
Is that right?
Well, I don't know, but I have 'em,
and I'm proud of 'em.
He's got four gold albums.
I think that's great.
Yeah, Charley Pride, man.
Charley Pride started it all.
Tomorrow
Charley Pride
was the first black artist signed
to a major country record label in 1965.
And he became a huge star.
Like this
guy was not just, okay.
He was a massive success.
You stopped loving me
And he just did his thing.
He didn't let anything get in his way
of bein' what he wanted to be,
to be a country artist
when there was no people
of color doin' it.
And you know, it's a
strange thing on the radio,
you just hear this voice,
and I associate with voices,
and you'd never think
that there was a black man
would be singing country.
What happened the first
time you walked out
and was introduced at the country fair?
Well, it was actually, Ben,
it was in Detroit, Michigan,
and I had 10 minutes on the show.
I drove all the way from Montana,
and I walked and I'm down in
the shadows, and they said,
"Ladies and gentlemen,"
"how about it now for RCAs Charley Pride?"
It was like.
Big applaud, and I come outta those lights
up in the shadows.
I mean, out of the shadows,
up in those lights.
And they said.
They didn't stop applaudin'.
They just like turned the volume down.
Put on the gloves.
No, the whisperers came up.
I had this little spiel.
I didn't have but 10 minutes.
I had to have somethin'
quick to loose 'em up.
They're sittin' there goin'.
I said, "Ladies and gentlemen",
"I realize it's a little unique,
"me comin' out here on
a country music show"
"wearin' this permanent tan."
So I said, "I'm gonna do
the three songs I have",
"and then the ones I've
been doin' all my life"
"before I had my three,
and I hope you enjoy it."
And I hit it.
And when I came off it
was a three o'clock show
and an eight o'clock show,
I sang from that show until
the next one at eight o'clock.
My
whole life for this
Few acres on the outside of town
I've always pictured this moment
This mornin' they're gonna
start breakin' ground
If this is gonna be
Where we're gonna be
Let me drop down to my knees right now
Charley Pride, man, it's still crazy
gettin' to say that he was a friend.
The last two and a half years
we talked on the phone every other Sunday
for an hour or two.
And he told me a lot about
how to handle yourself
in certain situations,
to where you handle yourself with grace.
But at the same time,
you don't shy away from issues
that you need to address.
Turn this house into a home sweet home
Paint some memories on these walls
And keep this family together
Forever and ever I know
The prayer it works
So God bless this day
I feel like Charley did his part.
Charley came into the genre in a time
when they were still hangin'
and hosin' black peoples in the streets,
in the 60s and 70s.
And he was there.
He was there for a long
time at a high level.
He showed that it could be done.
And prayer it works yeah
So God bless this day
We've seen throughout
history that representation
in and of itself is not enough,
or Charley Pride would
have fixed everything.
There have always been moments
where you see this kind
of push of black artists
trying to get in, but then
ultimately being shut out.
Charley Pride becomes
this massive success.
Of course other black people
think that this is my opportunity,
but the walls came down pretty quickly
because there could only be one.
Everyone told us to go to Charley Pride.
Oh, you wanna get a
break in country music?
Go to Charley Pride.
And I never could understand
why they did that.
But basically it was to
get us out of their face.
You're black in the country,
oh go find Charley Pride.
Well, why, did he have they label?
Was he lookin' for talent?
No.
You're the label.
It solidified the powers that be
the ability to say, "We're not prejudice."
"We have a Charley Pride."
"We have a black man in country music."
Now I'm gonna quote Dr.
Cleve Francis on this.
He said, "What 30 some
million black people"
"shook the country music tree
"and one brother fell out in 75 years"
"when I know there were many more trying."
I'm a member of a oratorical people.
We tell stories from the
beginning through song,
through poem, and I think
our story's gotta be honored.
It's kinda hard to find country music
from black artists in Nashville
that are from Nashville,
that are really,
that are really reflecting who we are.
And I feel like if there was more that
it would totally change my
perspective of the music.
Our story's gotta be honored,
and it's gotta be held,
held with the degree of
authenticity and respect
in order for it to
resonate with the people.
Places like these are important,
because this is really where we start
to see the music merged together,
black musicians, white musicians,
like you see a lotta old pictures
where you got guys that
are playin' the banjo,
black musicians, they're
doing it in these settings.
They're entertaining white crowds.
These settings are so indicative
of what is happening in country music,
what has been happening country music,
because we're standing on
a place of stolen labor.
We look at the industry
now that is birthed
out of these black genres,
these black musical traditions,
and it's really stolen from our people,
because they don't get to participate
in the wealth that's being built here now.
And you can't separate the industry
that comes out of this place
without talking about the
ugliness of this place.
I had always been apologizing, almost,
for being in these spaces,
where I was always the one black person
in these very white...
And people like, "Why
aren't you singin' jazz?"
I was constantly being
asked to explain myself,
"Why are you doing this?"
"Why are you doing this music."
First and foremost,
music is about how it makes you feel,
regardless of what you look
like or where you grew up.
For me as a kid, I really
struggled with feeling in between.
I'm either not white,
I'm not black enough.
I'm in the middle of all of this,
tryin' to figure out who I am,
and when I discovered this
history and this music,
that's when I was like, this
is what makes me an American.
Quasheba, Quasheba
You're free now, you're free now
How does your spirit fly
I've had very academic discussions
about the transatlantic slave trade.
You can't just sit down
and just start talking
about that with people,
because we're still healing from it.
Black people and white people
are still healing from this.
A song and music has this
way of disarming people.
It takes a story or an
idea and makes it to where
the person kinda has to hear it.
Blood of your blood
Bone of your bone
By the grace of your
strength we have life
I believe that's how we break these cycles
of bigotry and violence.
From the Golden Coast of Ghana
To the bondage of Grenada
We can't do any of it,
if we can't face that they're happening.
And if we can't talk about
that they're happening...
The white policeman
assaulting me when I was 12,
the white guy spitting on me
in the street when I was 15,
the white woman who told me
I couldn't use the bathroom
after my entire band had,
because they didn't have one.
You're free now, you're free now
I have to talk about these
things to be able to live,
to be able to survive.
Blood of your blood
Bone of your bone
By the grace of your
strength we have life
You were forgotten, almost forsaken
But your children founded generations
Your strength sustained them
They won their freedom
Traced our roots to find you waitin'
Quasheba, Quasheba
You're free now you're free now
How does your spirit fly
Blood of your blood
Bone of your bone
By the grace of your
strength we have life
Quasheba, Quasheba
You're free now, you're free now
How far your spirit's flown
Blood of your blood
Bone of your bone
By the grace of your
strength we are home
By the grace of your
strength we are home
We are home
We are home
We are
Home
I'm like, this is the
biggest song of all time.
Arguably.
We have never seen a song in
the internet era this big.
And it's not just that the song is big.
It's big and it's controversial.
And let me tell you right now,
it's a country song, so
make some noise right now.
It wasn't controversial to me.
I was like, that's dope.
But I'm saying it was
controversial to some people.
Let's make
some noise right now
for Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus.
He made like this one beat,
and it was like,
I used it on a song, and the song blew up.
You know how it goes.
What was the name of it?
2019 Officially
belongs to Lil Nas X.
That song became the longest
running number one single
in Billboards history.
- I like Nas X, though.
- That song, that song.
He came out with a good song.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He caught it at the beginning.
He wasn't even around country music.
So he had to prove himself
who he really was so he
can be respected out here as a person.
What he did was such
a shock to the world,
and to the country music world,
especially once he came out,
and then it was like, okay,
so we have this young gay black dude,
and he's got Billy Ray on the song.
I mean, the impact was huge.
Song went freakin' diamond.
You know what I'm sayin'?
It opened people's eyes and ears up that
we can do it all.
We can do whatever, it's no limitations.
Especially when it comes to creativity.
Like, it's none.
And with "Old Town Road,"
it definitely opened up, like I said,
people's eyes and ears to be like, oh,
there's black people doin' this?
As a kid growing up,
what that role model
that we talkin' about-
A lotta kids
are listenin' to that song.
Yeah, yeah, so you know you need
some positive role model around
to hear something positive to say,
"Hey, I can do that."
Lil Nas X "Old Town Road."
And a couple days ago it
just reached number one.
The song made Billboard chart history.
It's the only song to simultaneously
appear on the Hot 100,
the Hot R&B Hip Hop Songs Chart,
and the Hot Country Songs Chart.
But now Billboard has pulled it
from the country songs chart
because they no longer believe
that the song is country enough.
People were mad.
People were mad, and I'm
like, I was just watching it,
and I'm like, I wonder
what they're gonna do.
Are they gonna boycott him?
So I was just really fascinated by it.
I followed the whole thing.
And then when I saw kind of how
it started to resolve itself
and people were like,
"Well, why can't he do it?"
Obviously that song was massive.
And then he dropped some more music
that was not like that at all.
And I was like, wait,
but people like this.
I was like, people like that.
Then I was like, okay,
well, why can't I do it?
There's no genre that sounds today
like it sounded 10 years ago,
20 years ago, 30 years ago.
As we've seen in country
music throughout the years,
as the sonics have changed,
there is this constant
borrowing from other genres,
from other sounds.
There is borrowing from
gospel, from black gospel.
There's borrowing from black R&B.
Now we're in this era where there's
a lot of borrowing from hip hop.
It all evolves, and that
creates more of an opportunity
to bring in people from outside of this,
particularly when the artist
that is doing this genre blending
looks like a Breland or a Blanco Brown.
Lil Nas had to take some Ls
as a young black man in this space,
and I don't blame him for not
wanting to stay in this space.
However, by him doing that,
he made it easier for
me to do what I'm doing.
Scuff these Jordans
You can say you hate me
You can call me crazy
But don't touch my truck
Skrrt
Skrrt
Don't touch my truck
I put it out in September of '19,
and randomly in December
someone hit me up and was like,
"Yo, your song is on TikTok."
And I went and checked, and I was like,
every minute there was
new videos being made.
It put up like 200 videos in like a day.
And I was like 200
people made videos to it?
And then I went and checked the numbers,
and we were at like 30,000 streams.
And I was like, oh, we just spiked crazy.
I was like, this is dope.
And then every day after that,
it was just like going
more and more and more.
And about a week after that,
I started getting calls from labels,
and they were like,
they're like, "Hey, you're an artist?"
"You're Breland the artist?"
And I was like, "I guess so."
And they're like, "We
wanna meet with you."
And I'm like, the first
couple calls that I got,
I was like, all right, sure.
But then I got calls from
like 15 different major labels
in a 24-hour span.
And I was like, oh, this
is for real, for real.
Your song, "My Truck," was very popular.
So popular, in fact, that
I have a surprise for you.
So on behalf of Bad Realm Records-
- Oh y'all, oh no.
No, oh no.
So wait, on behalf of Bad Realm Records
and Atlantic Records,
we wanna present you with
a platinum certification-
- Don't do me
like that, Kelly.
For selling
one million copies of "My Truck,"
which is hard to do right now, y'all.
That's incredible.
I just knew there was
a lane that was open,
and if the lane is open for
one, it's open for everybody.
I get red roses while you rob me blind
Red roses
Oh ooh over you
And I get red roses
while you rob me blind
Red roses while the girls you hide
They don't mean a thing
They don't mean a thing to me anymore
I feel like music is my
life, it's everything.
It's never been a question,
like, what do I wanna do?
What will my career be?
I've always just been like,
I'm going to make history.
I'm going to be a singer,
and I'm going to do what I love.
When people ask me why did
I choose country music,
I just tell them country music chose me.
That's how I feel.
I've only been in Nashville
for two or three years.
They haven't seen a lot of
black women or black men
in the country space.
And so, because of that,
they don't know what to expect from me.
I feel like especially
being in country music
I kinda have to be aware
of everything that I do,
but I'm just like, I'm gonna be me.
And for me, I'm like, I wanna
be as extra as possible.
Like that's just me.
Oh yeah, I'll do freestylin'.
Country music was so simple
to me, and it told stories.
You didn't have to create a facade.
You just could tell
whatever story you wanted.
And I just, I gravitated towards it.
You gotta create your own path
and go for your own glory.
So, couldn't nobody tell
me what I couldn't do.
I was gonna keep on doin'
it either way it go.
If it didn't work,
I'm great with listening to
myself goin' down the highway.
In 2018, I realized I
would never fit the mold.
I stopped asking myself if
something was good enough
or radio enough, commercial enough.
I started asking, is this me?
Is this who I am?
Is this what I wanna do?
Am I communicating my heart?
And that for me was the most freeing thing
that could have ever
happened to me artistically.
Whenever you are makin' music,
and in particular, if you
have dreads and you're black,
then people
automatically assume things,
like I'll be walkin' through the airport
in some random city and people be like,
"Oh, I love your hair.
"Oh, you have a guitar."
"Are you gonna do reggae?"
And I'm like, "Oh, I love
reggae, but no I'm not."
Makin' life easier would be conforming
to what people would see me do physically.
But I do what I do.
I do what my heart tells me.
And I sound like I sound.
And I don't feel like
I wanna spend my time
explaining all that.
Mmmm
Mmmm
You know, they say,
country music is three
cords and the truth.
So, I'm just sayin' my truth.
This is what I wanna write.
This is what I wanna put out.
This is what I want people to hear.
And especially being in this space,
like why shy away from
who I am and how I feel?
Sometimes mmm
Mmm
It is my honor and it is my privilege
to talk about being
black because I am black.
It's my honor and privilege
to talk about being a woman
because I am a woman,
and I have all of those experiences,
I think, reflected in my music.
This music thing that everyone
loves and we love, it's hard.
It's a whole lotta stuff that
goes on in the background,
and it can get discouraging,
but if you push through it,
you just never know if a
time like this will happen,
where we're basically seeing
a renaissance in music
and in country music especially.
Mmm
As I walk through the cornfield
alone, full of emptiness
As I look to my left and my right
There's no one there to hold my hand
As my nerves get to shakin'
And my voice gets to tremblin'
Just start prayin' for me
Just start prayin'
On the ledge
I take in all of the fresh air
On my way down
A million miles away
I met an angel
And she told me everything'll be okay
That's when I woke up, baby
Show me love, show
me love, show me love
Girl I love, girl I love
you more than I love myself
I need love, I need
love, oh, I need love
We all know that a drink
can't heal my heart
That's why I need you by my side
I need love
Okay, be cool.
Be cool when I let you out here, okay?
You just enjoy yourself.
Be cool, buddy.
That's a big boy.
Woo hoo hoo hoo hoo.
The feeling in the country is amazing.
It's peaceful.
You know,
when you're lookin' around at
all this stuff, you feel God,
you feel peace.
It's phenomenal, man,
to have my babies out
here in the open field.
Up under this beautiful
light from the Lord upstairs,
peaceful, quiet.
They can run around,
do whatever they want.
Woo, woo, woo.
Woo, woo, woo.
Woo, woo, woo.
I've been here doin' this since 2008.
I felt like we needed to be down here,
openin' the doors up because
this music is amazin'.
This music is beautiful and it's positive.
I felt like I could shine
a light on this genre,
and say, listen, we don't
have to just do this.
We can move out to the country.
We can be out here with horses and cows.
You could be where the air is clean.
So it's deep in my heart, and say, listen,
we can enjoy this dream.
We can enjoy this life.
And you can make music
in these environments,
about these environments.
And you can just sit and write a song
and sing a song with nothing,
like with no electricity,
sit outside and be like,
I don't need anything.
I could sit here and I
could write a hit song.
And that's powerful when you
can do somethin' like that.
Kick it in the country,
man, eatin' on some hay
I can kick it with you big Joe all day
Don't let me fall
Baby, don't let me fall
We can do it all
Yeah, we can do it all
Winter, spring, in
the summer or the fall
Whatever you do my buddy,
just don't let me fall
We don't need no saddles we
ride bareback around here baby
All I wanna do is take you out
And show you love, my dear baby
Meet a pretty little lady in the field
Ridin' horses with me
Out in the country in Tennessee
Where we feel free
My whole experience in the music industry,
I wished that there were
more people of color
to sing the songs I was writin',
because there's a different
way that we sing sometimes.
There's a different way
that soul comes out.
The experiences of being black in America,
that puts something in your soul deep down
to where you sing the
song a little different.
I do think that there is a shift.
There's a shift in
consciousness that has occurred.
Starting with the lockdown,
all of the abuses that have always gone on
that continued to go on,
but which were filmed and absorbed
in people's psyches and their emotions
in a deeper way than ever
before in my lifetime.
Nashville is a part of a whole macrocosm
that I think there is a
wave of change happening
in a sustained way that I
have not witnessed in my life.
That truth
earned Mickey Guyton
her first ever Grammy nomination
for her deeply personal
song, "Black Like Me,"
making Mickey the first
black female solo artist ever
to earn a nod in a country music category.
Now you are headin' into the weekend
with a trophy already in your hand,
of course, that is for New
Male Artist of the Year.
You are the first black
musician to do that.
This weekend Mickey Guyton
will become the first
black woman to co-host
the Academy of Country Music Awards.
She was the only black woman
to be nominated for an award this year.
But as Amna Nawaz reports,
a number of black women
are starting to gain
traction in the genre.
When I started meeting Reyna
Roberts and Kren McCormick
and Camille Parker and Mickey Guyton,
I just started feelin'
like, oh, this is a thing.
This is happening.
It's not just me.
There is a shift happening.
There is a whole new sound comin',
and it's not to take
place of something else.
We just wanna join the story.
No matter how many
different ways I sang,
mo matter what makeup you put on me,
I'm still a black woman.
And that's never going to change.
And I have to be who I am and
love that and accept that.
And when I got to that place, it was,
it almost makes me teary
eyed to even talk about,
but it was truly one of
the most freeing things
I could have ever done for myself.
There's so many amazing
things happening for me,
but there is so much sadness
because I do know too much.
I know entirely too much.
My daddy work day and night
For an old house and a used car
Just to live that good life
Mmm
It shouldn't be twice as hard
Oh now
Now I'm all grown up
and nothin' has changed
It's a hard life
On Easy Street
Just white painted picket
fences far as you can see
If you think we live
in the land of the free
You should try be a black like me
I've been in town for years,
and it took a song like "Black Like Me"
and a man dying for people to notice me.
How do you celebrate that?
There are times, even to this day,
where I still question if I have a home
within the country music genre.
And I just have to be honest.
I don't always feel like I have a home,
But I'm creating a home.
And I hope I'm creating a space
for other people of color and black people
to feel like they have
a home in this genre.
It's gonna be difficult
to have conversations
about what we need to do or whether
there's actual hope and movement right now
when it ain't been this lit
in Nashville in a minute.
All these articles and that
hasn't happened in a while.
So if you're a part of that,
if you're ridin' that wave,
everything's too good right now.
It's almost come
every generation, right?
Where been these moments in time
when commercially speaking
there was potential there
to maybe be hopeful that something
was gonna change within the industry.
It's a business.
And it's a business that does
very, very well for itself,
which makes me cynical because,
from their perspective as a business
where the goal is to make money,
not to do the right thing,
there really isn't an incentive to change.
We're doin' a lotta talking
and a lotta discussing,
which is great, and which
is a wonderful first step.
But I have yet to see a lot
of action against racism.
We're seeing
kinda surface level things.
Some organizations in town that
as they cultivate the list of who's next,
they're making sure there's
black faces on there.
The CMAs and the ACMs they're, okay,
we don't wanna have another award show
where there are no black people.
That is happening.
But there's no consequences.
There's not a lot of
action of people saying
we are not going to do this anymore.
There's a lot of dismantling
that needs to be done.
I think if one artist says,
"I don't want Confederate
flags at my show,"
and that rule is followed,
it can't even be expressed
what a difference that
will make moving forward.
Nashville is growing,
and Nashville is getting better,
but I have not seen that same growth
in the country music industry.
And I'm startin' to see it now,
but it makes me wonder is
it cause of what's going on
in our society right now?
Or is it because they finally get it
and understand that the
country music industry
will be better if it becomes more diverse?
It's gonna take a lot
to change country music.
It's gotta be people behind the scenes,
people at record labels, people in radio.
It's gonna take a lot to change
and it's gonna take time.
We need to own the infrastructure,
and we need to have black executives
and black business owners
when it comes to the music business.
I think that's what changes it.
It's not just opportunity,
because opportunity just
gives you the chance
to operate within the
parameters that's already set
before you walk in the door,
but power gives you the opportunity
to do something pure.
If we could change that,
if we could hold power,
I think that's the key.
It's cool to be able to be in a position
to where I can help other artists,
because I wouldn't be here
without people helpin' me.
I feel like if I, as a black man,
had kind of pushed
through in this industry
because people believed in
me, only signed white artists,
I don't feel like that's
why I was placed here.
And I feel like if I see
other people of color
that are strugglin' but talented,
I feel like it's my job to help 'em.
We literally all have to
be having this conversation
with each other.
Like, hey, did you do
everything that you could today
or this week or this month or this year
to help make this space more equitable,
more fair for everybody?
Did you do your part?
It means very little to
me to win a CMA, a Grammy,
a Billboard Award, have a
number one, or any of that,
if I'm not able to do
anything for the people
who are also trying to do that.
How can we help black
people win in this space?
And how can we help everyone else
who's already been in this space
and has benefited from those systems,
how can we help them understand
what's happening here,
and so that they can also be a part of it?
And I think if we're able
to accomplish both of those things,
then we can achieve real
inclusivity and real equity.
There has to be not just one
or two or three black people
that go on to have successful careers
every 25 years or something like that.
There has to be several
black country artists
that have viable careers.
And we have to walk through
that door together as a whole,
as a unit, arm-in-arm,
through these doors,
and saying, "Hey, we're
here and we're talented."
"And we deserve to be here."
"Our dreams are valid."
There's no pushing the tide back.
There's no turning the
river the other way.
It's that long arc of justice.
It's long and slow and
we're not there yet,
but I do hope and believe
that we will get there.
It's a very exciting time for Nashville.
And I have great hopes for this city.
I've been here 40 years,
seen a lotta changes.
I have a lotta hope for this generation,
which has certainly went
further than anyone I've seen,
other than Charley Pride.
So I would say, learn
how to work together,
because there is such power in numbers.
Learn to write together,
exchange ideas together,
develop your sounds together,
support each other.
Help the platform.
Where can you go if you
don't have a platform?
That's what I would love
to see happen in Nashville.
And I think if it's powerful enough,
a whole lot of things could happen.
You can drink my liquor
You can call my lady
You can take my money
You can smoke my blunt
Scuff these Jordans
You can say you hate me
You can call me crazy, but
Don't touch my truck
Skrrt, skrrt
Skrrt
Yeah, yeah
Skrrt
Don't touch my truck
Brrp, truck
Skrrt
Woo-oo
Skrrt
Don't touch my
V8 engine with the windows tinted
Boy, we came from the bottom
Got it out the mud
Whole block jumpin' 'cause
the subs stay hittin'
If they roll up on me,
know I keep one tucked
Ooh, yeah
Woo
Tell them boys come and get me
I be ridin' through the city
Young, rich and I'm pretty
Homie, don't get it twisted
Keep a semi in the hemi
Red cup full of Henny
My hitters come in plenties, for real
You can drink my liquor
You can call my lady
You can take my money
You can smoke my blunt
Scuff these Jordans
You can say you hate me
You can call me crazy, but
Don't touch my truck
Skrrt, skrrt
Skrrt
Yeah, yeah
Skrrt
Don't touch my truck
Brrp, truck
Skrrt
Woo-oo
Skrrt
Don't touch my
Wood grain dash with
the matte black finish
And it match my shawty
with the big ol' butt
Tell them boys come and get me
I be ridin' through the city
Young, rich and I'm pretty
Homie, don't get it twisted
Keep a semi in the hemi
Red cup full of Henny
My hitters come in plenties, for real
You can drink my liquor
You can call my lady
You can take my money
You can smoke my blunt
Scuff these Jordans
You can say you hate me
You can call me crazy, but
Don't touch my truck
Skrrt
Skrrt
Don't touch my truck
Skrrt
Skrrt
Don't touch my truck
Don't touch my truck
Don't touch my truck