People come to Nashville from all over the world to make country music. Rissi Palmer is one of the many. But she’s also one of the few — one of the few to ever crack the Billboard country charts, and fewer still to do it as a Black woman.
Nearly two decades ago, “Country Girl” announced her to the world. The song was a declaration that you don’t have to be from Arkansas or speak with a drawl to belong in country music. She had a line in there that touched on race, too. Her label made her take it out.
A lot has changed since then — and a lot hasn’t. Country music is still working out who gets to belong, who gets to be heard, and who gets to tell their own story without compromise. Rissi Palmer has spent the better part of 20 years figuring out her own answer to those questions, and her new album “Perspectives” is where she lands.
It’s as country as anything she’s ever made, but her music no longer backs away from her Blackness.
In this conversation, Palmer talks about the long road from that first charting single to where she stands today — as an artist, an advocate, and the founder of Color Me Country Radio. She talks about what it took to stay in this industry on her own terms, what she wishes she’d known, and what “Perspectives” is really trying to say.
This episode was produced by Liv Lombardi.
Further Reading:
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM