Beyonce and country radio row: What happened, why fans are calling radio station 'racist'

Beyonce sent her entire fandom into a frenzy on the Super Bowl night when she announced her new country album Renaissance Act II and went on to release two songs – “Texas Hold Em” and “16 Carriages.” Beyonce's announcement and release of her two songs were enough to thrill her millions of fans, who couldn't stop themselvesfrom listening toQueen Bey's new track.

After the big release, a row eruptedon social media between Queen Bey's fans and a radio station that denied fans' request to play Beyonce's new country single''Texas Hold 'Em''.

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Earlier this week, a country radio station in Oklahoma, USA, refused to play Beyonce's song saying that they do not play Beyonce as they area country music station.

The furious fan who made the request was quick to share the incident on X, as he went on to accuse KYLC-FM of ''racism and discrimination.''

Fan who goes by the name Justin on X shared the screengrab of the mail that he got from Oklahoma's station rejecting his request. He also tagged Beyonce's fans account.

The response reads, “We do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station.”

Sharing the screenshot, he wrote, ''I requested Texas Hold ‘Em at my local country radio station (KYKC) and after requesting, I received an email from the radio station stating “We do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station.''

He further added, ''This station needs to be held accountable for their blatant racism and discrimination against Beyoncé.''

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''@1001KYKC. This is absolutely ridiculous and racist. You guys should be ashamed. I grew up listening to your station,'' Justin wrote in another post on X.

His post was quick to garner the attentionBeyonce's fanswho slammed radio stations for not playing the song of the Grammy-winning singer. Some fans also wrote a mail and shared screenshots of the same on X.

The incident sparked outrage with many calling it a racist act.

The outcry led to a reaction from Roger Harris, radio station manager for South Central Oklahoma Radio Enterprises, which also sees KYKC.

In the statement, Harris said that the station was not aware of Beyonce's new song, and now it has been added to the station's playlist.

''Up until now, [Beyoncé] hasn't been a 'country artist.' So we responded to the email in the same way we would have responded to someone requesting a Rolling Stones song on our country station," Harris told EW over email.

"We literally just learned about the new song... but we didn't have the actual song in our possession. Normally we would watch a new song to see how it does on the charts before we added [sic] it. But... we apparently were targeted in a big campaign to add the song. As soon as we received the file, we did add it to the playlist of our country station."

The station later shared a screenshot of a monitor showing Bayonce's song in the playlist on X, and wrote, ''Lots of call coming in for Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ‘Em. It’s coming up in minutes.''

Country music row with black artist

The Beyonce and radio station row has triggered a debate about Black artists being sidelinedfrom country music. This is not the first time when Beyonce's name has cropped in such an incident.

In 2016, Beyonce earned nine Grammy nominations, but her country song ''Daddy Lessons'' from the album Lemonade was rejected by the Recording Academy's Country Music Committee, reported AP back then.

An insider from the Grammy nomination process told The Associated Press that the singer submitted Daddy Lessonsto the country category. However, the Country Music Committee rejected the song.

Not only this but the country music industry has been called out for sidelining black artists. In 2019, Billboard removed Lil Nas X’s "Old Town Road" from the Hot Country Charts, and in a statement later, a Billboard representative said that his song does not have ''enough elements of today’s country music.''