A crowded bar, copious drinking, a strummed guitar and a chorus that will make even abstainers want to shout along: Shaboozey ’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has it all, which explains why it’s vying for summer-mainstay status with Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” and Post Malone and Morgan Wallen’s “I Had Some Help,” It’s easy to categorize those songs, but what exactly is “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”? Hip hop with country flavor? Country with rap trimmings? Or some ingenious melding of the two that portends a new genre? “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” isn’t the Virginia-born, Nigerian American first rodeo. His 2022 debut, Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die , dipped its toe in country waters, leaving behind his sulking first single, “Jeff Gordon.” But Cowboys still felt very much steeped in hip hop.
On its follow-up, Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going , he comes across like someone raised on country who also appreciates hip hop. In doing so, he’s effectively changed the game. Cowboy Carter (where he made two cameos) lobbed the first volley in redefining and modernizing country, but Shaboozey’s second album is a full-on barrage of all those possibilities.
Country traditions are embedded in the album at nearly every turn, and not merely when the occasional banjo or guitar twang pop up in one of its songs. Throughout the record, Shaboozey taps into time-honored Nashville imagery: freight trains, getting loaded and .
