A new Beyoncé release isn’t just an album — it’s a sprawling collective effort where the supporting cast and behind the scenes crew can reveal a lot about the scope of the star’s vision. For “Cowboy Carter,” in addition to household names like Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Miley Cyrus and Post Malone (and a brief cameo from her daughter Rumi), she’s looped in a slew of collaborators new and old. Here’s a guide to some of the most significant figures you’ll see in the credits.
Rhiannon Giddens
Rihannon Giddens plays on the “Cowboy Carter” single “Texas Hold ’Em,” but beyond the banjo and viola she contributed to the track, she lends the whole project a special kind of historical weight. During the past two decades, Giddens has led a new wave of folk artists helping to shed light on the foundational role that Black musicians played in the creation of American roots music. A scholar of the banjo as much as a practitioner, she’s made it her mission to educate audiences about its history as an African-descended instrument that was once, as she put it in 2017 when she won a MacArthur Genius Grant, “an absolute emblem of the African American in the South.”
Trained as an opera singer, Giddens rose to prominence in the early 2000s as a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops — with Dom Flemons, Justin Robinson and Sule Greg Wilson — a Grammy-winning group that celebrated and updated the legacy of Black string bands with help from an older mentor, the fiddler Joe Thompson. In 2023, she released “You’re the One,” her first album of all original material. Last year, Giddens also won a Pulitzer Prize for “Omar,” an opera she co-wrote with the composer Michael Abels based on the life of a West African Muslim scholar who was captured and sold as a slave in America.
Raphael Saadiq
Raphael Saadiq’s name has been a mark of quality in R&B for more than 30 years. Saadiq, who wrote, produced and played various instruments on Beyoncé’s latest, first found fame in the late ’80s with the trio Tony! Toni! Toné! and went on to score a Top 20 solo hit with “Ask of You” in 1995. He became an in-demand producer and worked with a wide array of artists including D’Angelo — whose two biggest hits, “Lady” and “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” are Saadiq co-writes — as well as Whitney Houston, Erykah Badu and Bilal. He’s been in Beyoncé’s orbit for years, having produced her team-up with Stevie Wonder on a 2005 Luther Vandross tribute album, helped produce her sister Solange’s acclaimed 2016 effort “A Seat at the Table,” and appeared on “Renaissance” as a producer, writer and performer.
Linda Martell
More than 50 years ago, Linda Martell broke barriers in country music, becoming the first Black woman to find commercial success in the genre, and the first to perform on the Grand Ole Opry as a solo act. Her lone album, “Color Me Country” from 1970, found her rebranding as a country artist after earlier work in a girl-group pop vein, and yielded two Top 40 country singles. But Martell faced racism on the road — “You’d be singing and they’d shout out names and you know the names they would call you,” she told Rolling Stone in 2020 — and, after a dispute with her producer, her career faltered. She never made another album, but reissues of “Color Me Country” have brought overdue attention to the artist, now 82, over the past decade. “I am proud that Beyoncé is exploring her country music roots,” she said in a statement on Friday. “What she is doing is beautiful, and I’m honored to be a part of it. It’s Beyoncé, after all!”
Robert Randolph
Robert Randolph’s pedal-steel guitar is a background texture on “Cowboy Carter,” turning up on the single “16 Carriages,” but typically, it’s the star attraction. Since the early 2000s, Randolph has been touring and recording with his Family Band, honing a rousing fusion of R&B, rock, funk, blues and the gospel music he grew up on. Before he became a bandleader and an in-demand collaborator with the Allman Brothers, Buddy Guy, Norah Jones and other marquee names, he was a musical phenom in the Black Pentecostal church, working in the tradition of so-called sacred steel. As Randolph recently told Rolling Stone, Beyoncé recruited him to help add “country fire” to her new project: “She said she liked the way I make my instrument sound like a singer.”
Dave Hamelin
Dave Hamelin spent the early 2000s drumming — and, later, playing guitar and singing — in the Stills, a Montreal outfit that was part of an explosion of indie-rock from Canada dovetailing with the fertile New York scene. After the band’s 2011 breakup, Hamelin found a niche as a producer to various Canadian rock luminaries, including Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew, the Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie and, later, American acts in the GOOD Music orbit, like the singer-rapper 070 Shake. His “Cowboy Carter” work, which includes songwriting, production and keyboards on “16 Carriages,” marks his first Beyoncé credit.
Tanner Adell
“Lookin’ like Beyoncé with a lasso,” Tanner Adell described herself on “Buckle Bunny,” the title track from her 2023 debut. The singer-songwriter, who has cited Dolly Parton and Destiny’s Child as key early influences, has racked up tens of millions of streams and amassed an impressive TikTok following with her twangy-voiced, attitude-heavy fusion of country, pop and hip-hop. Her recent acoustic ballad “Luke Combs,” where she professes that her “country heart still wants to be the girl in a Luke Combs song,” shows off her range. “My dream is to be the first genuinely country pop star,” she said last year, in an interview where she named Beyoncé as her dream collaborator. Now, she’s one of four guests on a cover of the Beatles’ “Blackbird.”
Khirye Tyler
Before the producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Khirye Tyler made his studio debut with Beyoncé on “Texas Hold ’Em,” his name turned up in the credits for another No. 1 hit: Roddy Ricch’s “The Box.” Establishing himself as part of the gospel-soul outfit Red Hands, Tyler has made inroads into the pop world, working as a musical director for Khalid and Alicia Keys, appearing on albums by Keys and Jay Electronica, and wearing numerous hats on Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour. Tyler played keyboards, contributed arrangements and helped musically direct the run; he also worked on the score for the tour’s companion documentary.
Brittany Spencer
In fall 2020, Brittany Spencer posted a video of herself covering the Highwomen’s “Crowded Table.” Less than a year later, she was onstage with the supergroup at BottleRock Napa, filling in for Amanda Shires, who was recovering from surgery. Hooked early on the Chicks and Shania Twain, the Baltimore native — who grew up performing in church choir and began singing classical music in high school — moved to Nashville in 2013 and honed her songwriting while working odd jobs. Her social-media breakthrough earned her high-profile opening slots with Jason Isbell and Reba McEntire, and paved the way for her Grand Ole Opry debut in 2021. Her new LP “My Stupid Life” showcases country-steeped songs that would sound perfectly at home on pop radio. She also appears on “Blackbiird.”
Shaboozey
The rising singer-songwriter Shaboozey — whose alias riffs on his last name, Chibueze, an Igbo word meaning “God is king” — draws equally on the hip-hop he grew up watching on BET’s “106 & Park,” the country music he heard in his native Virginia and classic-rock staples like Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead. After leaning toward trap on his earliest singles, he has carved out a unique space on more recent efforts like “Annabelle” and “Let It Burn,” layering his deep, drawling voice over acoustic guitar and folk-pop grooves while adding dashes of rap. “Sometimes I don’t feel I should rightfully be labeled as a country artist,” he said recently, ahead of his appearance on the “Cowboy Carter” tracks “Spaghettii” and “Sweet Honey Buckiin’.” “I have peers who make country in its truest form.”
Willie Jones
Willie Jones, credited on the gospelly “Just for Fun,” has racked up tens of millions of streams with a savvy blend of radio-ready country and the swagger of Southern rap. “Welcome to the ratchet Black zydeco rodeo,” the Louisiana artist sang on his 2021 single “Down by the Riverside” over a crunchy bar-band-like groove. On last year’s “Dive Bar,” he and fellow singer-songwriter Ben Burgess vowed, “We gonna turn this club into a dive bar tonight.” Jones, who grew up singing gospel music and pursued musical theater in high school, signed with Sony Music Nashville in 2021.
Reyna Roberts
The singer-songwriter Reyna Roberts, who appears on “Blackbiird,” started out early in country music, performing covers of the Chicks and LaBelle before the age of 5. The daughter of Army parents, she moved from Alaska to Alabama to California growing up and soaked up a variety of music, like Gretchen Wilson and the “awesome guitar riffs” of Steve Vai. She received a key career boost in 2020 when Mickey Guyton posted a video of her at the piano, belting out a cover of Carrie Underwood’s “Drinking Alone,” which Underwood reposted days later. As heard on “Stompin’ Grounds,” one of a few of her songs to earn more than a million streams, and “Louisiana,” a down-home anthem from her 2023 debut full-length “Bad Girl Bible,” her sound leans toward a raucous country-rock hybrid.
Tiera Kennedy
Tiera Kennedy has called her sound “R&B country,” a smooth blend that yielded more than 20 million streams for “Found It in You,” a 2021 track — written with her husband, the songwriter-producer Cameron Bedell — released when she was still unsigned. Kennedy grew up in Birmingham, Ala., where her parents played R&B around the house and local bluegrass musicians introduced her to classic country. Her family moved to Nashville, and she found a valuable mentor in Shania Twain, who invited Kennedy to perform on the music-competition show “Real Country.” Since then, Kennedy has honored Twain at the Ryman, debuted at the Grand Ole Opry, inked a record deal with Scott Borchetta (who once signed Taylor Swift), begun hosting an Apple Music country show, joined Beyoncé for “Blackbiird,” and released the twangy, hooky country-rock single “Jesus, My Mama, My Therapist” ahead of her upcoming debut album.
