Worlds collide in the outlaw West along Shaboozey’s multifaceted journey to greater success.
Shaboozey’s album “The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales” works because Black outlaws have always succeeded when they master multiple aesthetics while seamlessly occupying multiple universes.
It’s 2026, and Collins Chibueze is finally 31. Few people have aged past their 20s and achieved success as he did.
Co-write a stomp-clap-do-si-do folk-pop anthem about drinking a double shot of whiskey ($20) and lamenting that you can’t buy your girlfriend a $17,000 Birkin bag.
Even back then, there were multiple universes. Imagine Clint Eastwood as Josey Wales ponying up to the bar next to Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort, and that’s what was happening as "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" lyrically transpired downtown in Nashville on 5th Street, under Lower Broadway’s bright lights, in the shadow of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
Then, that song stays the world’s No. 1 song for two years.
However, clearly, music alone can’t master multiple aesthetics while seamlessly occupying multiple universes.
Thus, “The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales” sounds like Shaboozey put on the rhinestone suit Marty Robbins wore to perform “Big Iron,” the hat Woody Strode wore in Western movies, then grabbed the oversized action revolver the Hall of Fame-inducted Grand Ole Opry member mentioned.
Then, he closed his eyes and ran the streets of Harlem in the ‘70s, Bakersfield in the ‘80s, and Los Angeles in the ‘90s. Then he jumped back into his own skin and relived the music videos he loved in the 2000s, along with what was likely his most boldly imaginative era in the 2010s, as he struggled for visibility and acceptance.
The result is a record that is rare in that it looks better than it sounds.
Ultimately, call Shaboozey’s record a mastery of evolving the craft of “country music” to complete synesthesia, and you’re absolutely right.
Outlaw Intentionality and Creative Evolution
Intentionality defines the personality of this album.
On previous recordings, Shaboozey’s creative choices likely fell flatter than expected because they were still carrying the weight of serving as ways to break out and define differences. Now, in the wake of Grammy-winning success, it’s a way to shed expectations and to check in with and remember himself as his artistic vision grows and his commercial potential expands.
We’re amid a fascinating moment in that regard. Grammy-winning critical acclaim has EGOT-level Black creatives, familiar with the cinematic world, finally buying into Black country artists' musicality.
Whoopi Goldberg opens The War and Treaty’s latest album, “The Story of Michael and Tanya.” In contrast, Jamie Foxx (who maybe should consider starring as Django, Unchained, in a Broadway production of “The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales” and winning a Tony Award) opens Shaboozey’s latest.
Why wait until now? Hearing the attention to detail in the production and breadth of musical influences on both albums, it’s almost as if Charley Pride and Darius Rucker did the job as Nashville mainstream country artists too well for 60 years. That work almost makes any other artist wanting a piece of the pie look and sound like they were living in the shadows.
Whereas Michael and Tanya Trotter saddle up Valerie June, John Legend, and Wynonna Judd in their metaphorical posse of guests, Shaboozey’s outlaw gang consists of Leon Bridges, Sam Elliot, Gunna, Kehlani, Orville Peck, and Teyana Taylor.
Of course, retroactively cast this all in the specter of Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” featuring Shaboozey alongside 070 Shake, Tanner Adell, Chuk Berry, Dwayne Dopsie, The-Dream, Hit Boy, INK, Jay-Z, Willie Jones, Tiera Kennedy, Linda Martell, No-I.D., Robert Randolph, Reyna Roberts, Nile Rodgers, Raphael Saadiq, Brittney Spencer, Swizz Beatz, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Pharrell Williams, and Stevie Wonder.
“The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales” ultimately crystallizes a creative moment that births “outlaw” music and not “country,” as Black creatives can lucratively evolve Americana, bluegrass, blues, country, and folk beyond solely attempting the Sisyphean feat of reverting country music to its roots prior to Jimmie Rodgers releasing “Blue Yodel No. 1.”
The Outlaw West Meets Modern R&B
By proxy of R&B’s revival and the lens of this album dealing with a female protagonist under the male gaze, Shaboozey’s duet work with Kehlani on “Bullets & Blades” and Teyana Taylor on the interlude “Death of Jeremiah Walker” is noteworthy.
The lens of the outlaw West is ideal for judging R&B by a less weighty standard than how close this music can come to touching the hem of the garments of Chris Brown and Usher or Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston.
Modern era R&B is so sample-driven and auramaxxing-defined that it works best as a vibe. Having an artist like Shaboozey, who has spent over a decade eager to be a pop musical cinematographer, pairing with Kehlani and Taylor yields blueprints for an industry equally concerned with marketing, streaming, and touring as with achieving traditional standards of commercial and radio success.
“Bullets and blades have left scars that don’t fade / But I like how they look on your face,” Kehlani sings. Pair her work with Shaboozey alongside Stella Lefty’s reinterpretation of Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” and Kelsea Ballerini’s clear influence from SZA’s “Kill Bill” for her “PATTERNS” album. There’s a six-sided handshake now occurring between country music and pop’s top 10.
Place whatever Luke Combs or Morgan Wallen song of the moment alongside Ella Langley at the top of the countdown, and what’s emerged is Nashville and Appalachian-to-Western culture’s stronghold on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for likely quite some time to come.
Outlaws Take Center Stage: Shaboozey and the New Mainstream
Also note that in the conversation about topping country and pop’s charts, Shaboozey’s cinematic approach, beyond genre-scooping, brings his friend and collaborator Leon Bridges into the mix, yielding huge dividends on “Burn It Down.”
For a dozen years, Bridges has lived at the top of festival lineups and beneath the mainstream radar, vibing, at all times, in an era somewhere between Townes Van Zandt in 1972 and Ginuwine in 1997.
As a supporting actor in Shaboozey’s movie-as-album, the colors and shapes with which he musically creates have space to flourish. Again, thinking that successful Black outlaws are anything less than masters of aesthetics and universes is wrong. Trying to typecast their art to century-old expectations fostered by industries-as-machines is finally fully rendered as fallacious by this album.
Some people will say that “Cowboy Carter” or BigXThaPlug’s Nashville industry collaboration-laden “I Hope You’re Happy” did the same thing. However, they didn’t.
Yes, they’re key records historically. But upon listening to “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”’s logical mega-hit in the making, dance-floor follow-up, “Cowboy,” think of them more in terms of professional football.
In that vein, Beyoncé and BigX’s records become the impressively large and powerful offensive linemen who blocked so Shaboozey — the ultra-slick, great quarterback cut from the cloth of Randall Cunningham — could dip, dive, and work well within and beyond their efforts.
Now, imagine an “outlaw” — again, largely all-Black, team of artists operating beyond the existing creative, cultural, and sonic scope of Americana, bluegrass, blues, country, and folk — space.
And now, imagine Shaboozey as Cunningham, and then look around the space those genres' “outlaw” corners have fostered of late. To borrow a line from The Doors’ “Five to One,” the mainstream music industry has the guns, but they’ve got the numbers.
Could this mean that the “outlaw” space is taking over? Time will tell.
The Outlaw’s Journey: Endings, Epilogues, and Legacies
Shaboozey’s last album was entitled “Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going.”
His latest album closes with perhaps the best song he’s ever released, the mournful Western ballad “Coyoye’s Point.” That’s followed by an epilogue featuring Canadian performer Orville Peck, Shaboozey’s OG, as a Nashville country-and-western industry outlaw.
The back-to-back moment stamps that he’s arrived at his destination.
Amid the swirling sagebrush and the bird calls of hawks and ravens in the sky, a lonesome acoustic guitar and harmonica play.
Peck namechecks Laredo, Texas, and tells of seeing a cowboy shot dead in the sun-dried clay streets as a drum and fife, second-line-type death march starts.
Shaboozey’s cowboy spirit arrived dead on arrival.
However, note that Shaboozey has a 2022 album entitled “Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die.”
The performer, as already noted, is a Black outlaw and thus a master of multiple aesthetics while seamlessly occupying multiple universes.
If you’re able to do that, you’re also able to call your own shot that kills you.
Sometimes, as in the case of “The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales,” albums, if you pay attention to them like a movie that falls in line with a career-as-series of other attempted epics, are greater than music.
