A Conversation Around ‘Three Chords and the Actual Truth’ | Black Music Action Coalition With Billboard

Billboard‘s Editorial Director of R&B and Hip-Hop, Gail Mitchell, and Billboard‘s Executive Editor, West Coast & Nashville, Melinda Newman, Doctor of Musicology Jada Watson and singer-songwriter Ink discuss the intersectionality of the Black history of country music.

Ink:
Coming from a powerful voice like Beyoncé, she just took us all back to our roots.

Prophet:
We have with us the Editorial Director of R&B and Hip-Hop for Billboard, Ms. Gail Mitchell. Please give her a round of applause! I’m sorry y’all gotta make more noise for Gail than that. Don’t do that! And we have from Nashville, also with Billboard, covering all things country, please put your hands together for Ms. Melinda Newman, y’all!

And coming to the stage: Jada Watson is an assistant professor of digital humanities in the School of Information Studies at the University of Iowa. Principal investigator of the SongData project, Jada’s research centers on historical racial and gender equality in country music via David Grenner studies. She is a subject-matter expert in this — what we gonna learn from her tonight and today is serious information. So please put your hands together for who we like to call Dala Jada, Dr. Jada Watson, y’all! Please put your hands together.

This next artist, singer-songwriter I met probably about a decade ago in Atlanta, and she was wearing her cowboy hat then. And she’s been fighting and pushing this narrative and pushing for country music to be part of our story like everything else. And I’m so happy with the success that she has — not only has she written and wrote on many of your favorite artists, she also participated in the new Beyoncé project, she also wrote on this new Beyoncé project, and she also have her own single out with The Chainsmokers — it’s over 8 million streams. So please put your hands together for the one and only Ink, y’all.

Watch the full video above!