Beyoncé’s father feels his daughter not being nominated at all for the 2024 Country Music Awards despite her chart-topping country album boils down to one thing: her race.
Mathew Knowles spoke to TMZ on Tuesday (September 10), following the nominees being announced the day before.
Knowles says he’s not surprised about the snub, noting that Bey wasn’t met with a warm welcome when she performed with the Dixie Chicks at the 2016 CMAs and that she’s yet to receive an apology for it.
“[The voters are] showing it still comes down to white and Black,” he told the outlet. “There’s more white people in America and unfortunately they don’t vote based on ability and achievements, it’s still sometimes a white and Black thing.”
He concluded: “In America, there’s no accountability for people not being accepting of other cultures.”
The nominations for the Country Music Awards were announced on Monday (September 9), and Queen Bey did not get any. However, Shaboozey, who first came to the attention of many with his two appearances on Cowboy Carter, was nominated for Single of the Year for “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”
“Thank you Beyoncé for opening a door for us, starting a conversation, and giving us one of the most innovative country albums of all time!” he wrote on X as the news broke.
Bey’s fans were upset by the snub.
“The CMA’s have once again deferred to those in the industry who prefer to deny Black artists the recognition they deserve, failing to nominate Beyoncé in a single category this year despite her record-breaking success with TEXAS HOLD ‘EM and #COWBOYCARTER,” wrote fansite Beyoncé Legion.
Cowboy Carter was a massive success upon its release in March.
Billboard reported at the time that the album became officially Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day in all of 2024 as of Friday (March 29). The project’s “Texas Hold Em” was streamed more than 200 million additional times before the album’s release.
“Cowboy Carter [also] has the biggest debut to date earning more first-day streams on Amazon Music globally than any of her previous albums. The album also marks the most first-day streams for a country album by a female artist in the history of Amazon Music,” reported the outlet.
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The album debuted atop the Billboard 200 tally with 407,000 equivalent album units in its first week. It was the biggest sales week of 2024 at the time, though it has since been one-upped by Taylor Swift’s latest effort.
Twenty three of the album’s 27 songs also made it to the Billboard Hot 100 chart, bringing the Houston native’s career total Billboard Hot 100 songs to 106. She is now just the 17th artist and only the third woman to score over 100 entries since the Hot 100 was launched in 1958.
By May, the project had surpassed a billion streams on Spotify.
