The Bey Hive are holding radio stations accountable for “blatant racism” in refusing to give airtime Beyoncé’s new country singles Texas Hold ‘Em and 16 Carriages.
On Super Bowl night, R&B star Usher was not the only topic of discussion in the music realm. Following the broadcast of Beyoncé’s Verizon Super Bowl commercial with Tony Hale, the superstar ended the advertisement saying “release the music,” which lead to the upload of the singer’s country singles Texas Hold ‘Em and 16 Carriages.
Since the release of the songs, along with the release date of her upcoming album Renaissance Act II, fans have been waiting in high anticipation for the album’s release. During the wait, fans have been requesting the singles for radio airtime, but have seemed to run into roadblocks as country-driven radio stations are refusing to play the songs.
A viral tweet on X, formally known as Twitter, claimed an Oklahoma-based radio station sent him an email that refused to play his request of Beyoncé song Texas Hold ‘Em.
“I requested Texas Hold ‘Em at my local 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.”
@jussatto vis Twitter
The user, then, tagged the “Bey Hive” fan account insisting that the radio station “needs to be held accountable for their blatant racism and discrimination against Beyoncé.”
The tweet went viral causing the station to receive tons of backlash.
On Wednesday, the general manager of KYKC responded to the backlash with a statement to the public claiming that the emailed response is a misunderstanding.
“We initially refused to play it in the same manner if someone requested us to play The Rolling Stones on our country station. Fact is, we play Beyoncé on TWO of our other stations and love her … she is an icon. We just didn’t know about the song … then when we found out about it, we tried to get the song … which we did and we have already played it three times on YKC, our country station. We also play her on 105.5, KXFC-FM and KADA-FM on 99.3
But … finally we got our hands on it, and based on the fan support, we decided to air it.
Truthfully, normally we would (usually) wait a while to see how the song performs on the charts and on bigger country stations than ours, as we are just the little guys.”
Manager of 100.1 KYKC
Nonetheless, Beyoncé’s upcoming album, Renaissance Act II, is set to debut on Friday, March 29th.
Was this explanation understandable or just a cover-up? Chat it up in the comment section below and …
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