Shania Twain: You and I are from completely different time periods in the music industry, but you know a lot of old country—traditional, country-western country. What’s one of the first country songs you ever heard?
Shaboozey: My dad was an immigrant here from Nigeria, but he was always talking about Kenny Rogers and Don Williams and Dolly Parton. I’m like four or five years old, and I’m like, Who are these people?
But when I was younger, definitely Kenny Rogers. My dad played a lot of The Gambler. But then I really fell in love and had my own journey a little bit later on in life. I started listening to more classic rock, and then I uncovered the Stones, Pink Floyd, and all these different people. And then just kept peeling back until I heard Bob Dylan. It all got kind of messy and mix-y.
Twain: Well, we have that in common. The household that I grew up in, my grandparents and my parents, they were into the same stuff you’re talking about. It was Don Williams and Kitty Wells. [Her] song “[It Wasn’t God Who Made] Honky Tonk Angels” was part of my very first repertoire. But I think one of the very first songs I loved the most, that hit me as a songwriter, was Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe.” And I don’t know if you ever heard of that one, but you got to hear it. Just storytellers.
Shaboozey: I think the storytelling and how honest [country music] was was what caught me. I definitely had struggles trying to find my identity—in everything. Especially being that my parents are Nigerian but I was born in Virginia. I didn’t have the same cultural history as everybody else, whether that’s people that immigrated from Europe or Asia or even Africa.
Twain: We’re both very much outsiders in that sense.
Shaboozey: I just felt like that’s what the country music I love is: people just telling their stories.
I love hip-hop too. When I was young, it was Lil Wayne, Usher, Nelly, and Ja Rule. And I realized all these people are telling their stories and they influenced me. And then I was like, Man, how do I tell my own story within this? And someone started playing guitar and I started singing, and I tried to keep it real. And then people were like, “Oh, you got a voice” and you’re talking about real things that happened to you. Then they’re like, “This is pretty similar to country.”
Twain: It’s so country. You’re a storyteller. Our musical education comes so much from a wide range of music that we were influenced by—soul, R&B, folk, our grandparents’ country, for me, bluegrass and that sort of thing. So once you mature, as a self-taught songwriter and artist, you’re really a hybrid of all of these things. I mean, if I pick up a guitar and tell a story, that to me is country music. A good example is “I Will Always Love You.” Whitney Houston made it a worldwide smash but it’s actually a country song, by Dolly Parton.
