In the lead-up to Friday’s release of Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé gave us a small tidbit about its inspiration. She wrote on Instagram that the album was “over five years in the making” and “born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t.” Without naming said experience outright, she added, “I did a deeper dive into the history of country music and studied our rich musical archive.”

Following the breadcrumbs Bey dropped — an event from more than five years ago, country music, not feeling accepted — led many to the 2016 Country Music Association Awards. There, Beyoncé joined the Chicks for a surprise performance of “Daddy Lessons.”

To date, it was one of the most significant performances in CMA history, yet it can’t be found on the CMA’s official channels. That may be the result of a wave of racist and sexist backlash targeting the CMAs for allowing Beyoncé to take their stage. At the time, the CMAs said the lack of video was at Beyoncé’s discretion.

Why the backlash? It seemed a vocal contingent of fans believed Beyoncé — a Black woman unafraid to share her politics — isn’t what country music is.

With Beyoncé poised to reenter the genre with Cowboy Carter this week, it raises some existential questions. What is country music? What should it represent? Who does it belong to? Who gets to make the rules?

And perhaps the most pertinent question of all: Is Beyoncé going to change all of that?

Why the CMAs could have inspired Cowboy Carter

The key message in Beyoncé’s Instagram post is that she didn’t feel welcome and it was clear she wasn’t. Given her status, fame, and talent, the many A-list events that welcome her — the Oscars, the Grammys, the MTV Music Video Awards — absolutely overshadow any that wouldn’t. It could easily be argued that Beyoncé is bigger than the CMA Awards themselves.

But there’s something deeper here.

The CMAs both present and crystallize the identity of country music, as Alice Randall, a Black country songwriter and professor at Vanderbilt University explains to Vox. New stars are born, legends are honored, and legacies are cemented. In front of the genre’s elite, the CMAs determine what is — and,........

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