Instead, the controversy is about her "countryness," and whether a pop star can authentically cross from one genre to the next. Lucky for Beyoncé, it's been done plenty of times before. And her songs are arriving at a time when more and more Black musicians are charting country hits. Cross-racial collaboration Americans have long viewed country music ?" or, as it was known before World War II, hillbilly music ?" as largely the purview of white musicians. This is partly by design. The "hillbilly" category was initially created as a counterpart to the "race records" aimed at Black audiences from the 1920s to the 1940s.