Shaboozey

About Shaboozey

Shaboozey started making noise in the Virginia music scene before most people could spell his name right. Born Collins Obinna Chibueze, he took his childhood nickname and turned it into something that would eventually land on country radio, which is not typically where Nigerian-American kids from Virginia end up.

He grew up in Woodbridge, splitting his time between hip-hop and the kind of genre-less experimentation that happens when you grow up with the internet. His early work leaned into rap, but there was always something else lurking underneath. He wasn't trying to fit into a specific box, which meant it took a while for people to figure out where he belonged.

The breakthrough came sideways. His 2022 album "Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die" started blending country instrumentation with hip-hop flows in a way that felt natural rather than calculated. Songs like "Starfoxx" and "Vegas" showed someone who understood both worlds without feeling like a tourist in either. But it was really "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" that changed everything.

The song interpolated J-Kwon's "Tipsy" from 2004, which was a bold move that could have gone terribly wrong. Instead, it became unavoidable. The track hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2024 and sat there for an absurd amount of time. Suddenly Shaboozey was everywhere, including on Beyoncé's "Cowboy Carter" album, where he appeared on two tracks. Getting the Beyoncé cosign meant something, especially on an album that was explicitly about Black artists reclaiming space in country music.

What made his rise interesting was the pushback. Country radio programmers did their usual thing, being slow to embrace someone who didn't look like their idea of a country artist. Some stations played him, others didn't, and the whole conversation about who belongs in country music fired up again. Shaboozey mostly stayed out of the discourse and kept making music.

"Where I've Been, Isn't Where I'm Going" dropped in 2024, capitalizing on the momentum. The album dug deeper into the country-rap fusion he'd been building toward, with production that pulled from both Nashville and Atlanta. Tracks like "My Fault" showed he could write an actual country song without code-switching, while others kept one foot in the hip-hop world that raised him.

Right now he's navigating what it means to have a massive hit without being boxed in by it. He's touring, showing up on festival lineups that book both country and hip-hop acts, and generally existing in the space between genres that the industry is still figuring out how to market. Whether he becomes a fixture or a moment depends on what he does next, but at least he's doing it on his own terms.

Shaboozey's shows are low-key intense. Crowd's there because they know the verses, not because of hype man theatrics. He moves through his material without much dead air. Audiences are engaged but measured—people aren't losing it, they're nodding along and waiting for the bars they know.

Known for A Thousand Times, Believe, Still Here, Shaboozey

See Shaboozey Live