S
haboozey needs a tissue. Unfortunately, we’re on a postage-stamp-sized stage in a country bar called Losers, in the middle of the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas, doing a live interview with lights, cameras, and 100 or so invited guests in front of us, and a casino full of rowdy gamblers behind us.
There is not, however, a box of Kleenex.
The country music trailblazer started crying after I asked him to reflect on what his history-making Grammy win meant to him, not as an artist, but as a son and grandson. Back in February, Shaboozey became the first Black man to take home the Grammy for Best Country Duo/Group Performance, for “Amen,” a collaboration with the rapper-turned-country-singer Jelly Roll. Backstage in the press room at the Grammys that night, he broke down.
“I cried so much then because I really felt it all. It was just like…I might cry right now, y’all. Hold on,” he says now, his voice cracking. “Thinking about all the struggle and the pain that our people, my people, Black people, Nigerian people… To feel like I was able to be a part in some little way of Black history was just… It was a lot.”
