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PHOTOS BY G L ASKEW II
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Vacationers wearing cowboy hats
and Crocs in “sport mode” are moving slowly as they visit
local tourist spots, while working people in attire ranging
from business to construction are rushing back to their jobs
after eating lunch. Moving at his own pace, country artist
Breland is living both of those paths as he wraps up the last
leg of a playful, hours-long photo shoot on a balmy day in
late June.
The day began at contemporary
residential skyscraper 505 Nashville. Throughout the shoot,
Breland is open to the photographer’s spontaneity, despite it
requiring multiple elevator trips and calls to the building
staff for key-card access. One minute he’s shooting pool at
the game room on the seventh floor of the apartment renters’
wing; the next he’s playing John Legend’s “Ordinary People” on
the Yamaha grand piano inside the luxe eighth-floor lounge for
the building’s condo owners. As the day goes on, residents’
facial expressions range between an inquisitive “who?” when
they see him with a camera crew and an annoyed “why?” when
they can’t fit on the elevator with them. Breland responds to
both with the same pleasantries.
505 Nashville has
a commanding presence in the city, standing 45 stories tall,
with a glass facade that reflects every color in the sky. But
the photo shoot’s next location, the historic Ryman
Auditorium, with its arched stained-glass windows, still
manages to tower over it with 132 years of music history.
Formerly
home to the legendary Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman is flanked by
statues honoring some of its past performers, all of whom left
their marks on country music. Among them are pioneering female
singer and guitarist Loretta Lynn, bluegrass music creator
Bill Monroe, and its latest addition, Charlie Pride, who is
known as the first Black superstar in country music.
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Ever since crashing onto the music scene with his 2019 viral
hit “My Truck,” Breland has been on a mission to change the
way people view country music and Black people’s position in
it. The song emerged on the heels of Lil Nas X’s crossover
smash “Old Town Road” and Blanco Brown’s dance anthem “The Git
Up” and a year before Nelly’s collaboration with country duo
Florida Georgia Line, “Lil Bit.” All of which feature Black
men as the lead vocalist on a country song, foreshadowing the
current larger wave of Black artists swerving over into the
country lane.
Going on to plant his flag with
2020’s Breland EP and his 2022 debut album
Cross Country ,
Breland quickly became one
of country music’s most sought-after collaborators due to his
exceptional songwriting and penchant for melody. Just four
years into his solo career he’s already been on tour with
country queen Shania Twain, co-written two songs with
Grammy-winning star Keith Urban and won an Academy of Country
Music Award (in 2023). This June he was named a Global Music
Ambassador for the U.S. State Department alongside artists
like Chuck D of Public Enemy and Herbie Hancock, who will all
be tasked with “elevating music as a diplomatic platform to
expand access to education, economic opportunity and equity,
and inclusion.”
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It has to be mentioned that he was already doing that before
the government gave him a job title. Since 2022, he’s hosted
his annual “Breland & Friends” benefit concert at the
Ryman, where a long list of music superstars, including Josh
Groban and Nelly, have joined him on stage to perform duets
and create a slew of one-night-only memories for sold-out
crowds. Last year’s show produced a live album, and to date,
the event series has raised more than $300,000 for the Oasis
Center, an organization dedicated to helping youth in Middle
Tennessee, with services ranging from crisis intervention to
college prep.
With so much on his plate—including
opening for fellow genre-mashing artist Teddy Swims’s tour
starting in September and performing at a new event called
Red Bull Jukebox
in October—no one would blame Breland for catching a breath
on this walk he’s taking. But with the path that he’s helped
to clear getting more occupied by the day, he doesn’t feel
like he can slow down right now.
says Breland, literally counting the names on one hand as he
recites them. “Now there’s probably 15 to 20 Black artists
that have deals and are putting music out. Beyoncé coming
into this space changes the landscape, and now there’s more
diverse crowds that are tapped into country music and
country music is having this really unique cultural moment
that I definitely feel like I contributed to in a meaningful
way.”
He pauses. “But it’s also something that I
feel like I need to turn the gas up a little bit more,
because there’s always more work to be done.”
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The story of Breland and
his breakthrough song “My Truck” has been well documented. The
track, produced by Kal V and veteran songwriter Troy Taylor,
features Breland harmonizing about Air Jordans, blunts, V8
engines and plenty of other things Americans of all races
enjoy, over trap drums met with guitar picking.
Originally
released independently, the song picked up major momentum
online, leading to Breland signing a record deal with Atlantic
Records in 2020. The natural order of things was supposed to
go: Take the song to radio, get it played, put out an EP and
go on tour. But just as that plan was coming to fruition, the
world stopped due to the coronavirus pandemic and the
subsequent quarantine restrictions that came with it.
While radio and touring were no longer options, streaming still helped the project move along, with “My Truck” earning a gold plaque that August and then a platinum one the following January. (In June 2024, the single eclipsed the double-platinum mark for selling 2 million copies.) So the Breland EP served to introduce the singer-songwriter to audiences in the country and hip-hop/R&B worlds who may have been curious about what each other were doing, but not so much that they would come over and introduce themselves.
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“That doesn’t really happen a whole lot in music because it tends
to be segmented and the music industry has made it that way.
There’s a lot of history to support that. So I knew that what I
was doing was different and that it did have the chance to build a
bridge between cultures that don’t always have anything at their
epicenter.”
While it would be nice to think that
technology has flattened the fences and made everything available
to everybody all at once, that is only partially true. Because of
algorithms, curated playlists and other metrics that continue to
shape listeners’ tastes, it can be argued that audiences are as
segregated as ever. In theory, a hardcore hip-hop head can click
on a digital service provider’s “Hot Country Music” playlist out
of sheer curiosity. Just like a lifelong country music fanatic
could do the same with an R&B playlist. But if there’s nothing
or no one there framing it in a way that would help them
understand the music or the people behind it, it’s not likely they
would take any real interest. It’s Breland’s hope that music like
his can be that introduction past the marketing and closer to the
idea that people can find and appreciate what they have in common.
At age 29, it has taken some contrasting life experiences for
Breland to arrive at seeing things that way. Born and raised in
Burlington, New Jersey, Daniel Gerard Breland grew up exclusively
around gospel music, as both of his parents were ordained
ministers who also recorded and performed music themselves,
touring churches and other small venues. With the town being just
40 minutes northeast of Philadelphia, he was also raised in the
religion of sports, which explains why his Instagram feed mostly
features videos of him singing or giving game predictions—or, at
his apex, singing the game predictions.
Brought up in a
musical household, Breland says he and his siblings had to learn
how to sing whether or not they planned on pursuing the craft
professionally. Luckily for him, when he did decide to do music
for a living, he had tons of research to pull from.
“One
of the benefits of growing up in an environment like that is we
had Pro Tools when I was 9 years old,” says Breland of the popular
audio software, adding that seeing his parents hold down day jobs
while also producing music kept him inspired when he found himself
in the same situation starting his own career. “So now I have 20
years of Pro Tools experience where, if I’m in a studio and the
engineer is moving too slow, I’m like, ‘Get out the way, bro—I’m
about to just sit down and get this done myself.’ It brings me a
lot of joy to be able to record myself, because it is a very
grounding and fundamental experience from my childhood.”
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Amphitheatre
Nashville, TN
It wasn’t until he left home and went to boarding school at
the Peddie School in nearby Hightstown, New Jersey, in his
teenage years that he was exposed to other genres like
R&B, rock and rap. Up to this point, the only experience
he had actually doing music was singing in his school and
church choirs or singing background for his older siblings in
impromptu performances at home. Now that he was out on his
own, he wanted to try making this new music he was hearing. It
was here that he started working with his roommate, who had
the tools and instruments to help him do just that.
“The
way my brain works just as a musician, when I hear two songs
that are totally different, I’m immediately thinking of how
they’re similar,” says Breland.
Breland’s different way began to take shape when he declined
admission into NYU’s highly coveted Clive Davis Institute for
Recorded Music to instead study business at Georgetown
University. He explains the decision simply, stating, “I
already knew how to make music” and instead wanted to learn
the business side of the industry he dreamed of entering.
While at Georgetown, he joined the university’s long-running a
cappella group, the Phantoms, but off-campus he began dabbling
with rap music, linking with producers Austin Powerz and Lee
on the Beats, often working out of DJ Khaled’s New York City
studio. Breland is the first one to admit that, as a studious
college student raised in the church, he felt like a fish out
of water in that environment. But he notes that he was able to
connect with everyone in the room because they all spoke the
language of music.
“Regardless of what everybody
else was into in their personal lives or in their social
lives, I knew when we got in the studio to make music, they
could respect me as their peer because I’m gonna come up with
melodies and I’m gonna come up with lyrics,” he says.
Unfortunately,
activities in people’s personal lives are exactly what
eventually impacted his decision to move on. One of the main
artists with whom he’d built a rapport—a rappper from Queens
and protégé of French Montana named Chinx—was gunned down at
an intersection in 2015, changing Breland’s mind about what
avenue he wanted to take into the music industry.
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After finishing up at Georgetown, earning a degree in marketing and management, the next mile
of Breland’s walk took him where most people in his situation
go: Atlanta. While the nicknames like “the Black Mecca” and “the
Motown of the South” have begun to grow gray hairs, the city
still remains a hotbed for young Black musicians looking to get
to the next level—the catch being that there are so many of
them.
“I personally loved how many people there were
in Atlanta that were trying to make music, because it felt like
it gave me a bit of a community,” says Breland, responding to
the notion that being yet another Black person in Atlanta making
music could lead to being completely overlooked.
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To Breland, the “Nashville perspective” means creating melodies and writing lyrics that, as he simply puts it “make sense,” instead of relying on a stream of consciousness, just saying things that sound cool. This linear approach to songwriting slowly started to get Breland noticed in industry circles, catching the ear of people like the previously mentioned Taylor, which led to getting placements with artists like Trey Songz, YK Osiris and Elhae. While reading his name on album cover credits felt great, opportunities were still trickling instead of flooding, leading to him taking a corporate job and working a side gig as a vocal coach to make ends meet. Around this time, Breland was also starting to wonder if he was being pigeonholed. He knew he could sing but was advised to remain a writer. He listened to different musical genres but was only being approached to write in the hip-hop, R&B and occasionally gospel spaces.
Soon after signing his deal, Breland relocated to Nashville, sensing that the direction his music was going would be more welcome there. Which was probably the best thing he could’ve done at the time. Atlanta’s musical identity is a by-product of its predominantly Black population, built on a legacy of artists including Curtis Mayfield, Bobby Brown and OutKast. It’s also the birthplace of trap music and home to multiple Black megachurches. In such a crowded musical landscape, there wasn’t much room for Breland to find his path to success. Years prior, popular country singer Kane Brown had a similar go at it, learning that being a Black country artist in a Black city doesn’t always work before finally moving to Nashville himself. Things were looking up for Breland until March 2020, when the music industry slowed down due to COVID.
Forced into quarantine like the rest of the world, Breland figured that since everyone, including in-demand producers, songwriters and artists were all at the house and not touring or bouncing around studios as usual, he should shoot as many shots as possible. This led to him forming online relationships with dozens of people despite being new to town. Those bonds would pay off in the form of a star-studded cast joining him for his 2022 debut album Cross Country, featuring appearances from the aforementioned Urban, Lady A, Mickey Guyton and Thomas Rhett, with writing contributions from Sam Sumser, Sam Hunt and Hardy to name a few. Some of these same friends and more have performed at “Breland & Friends” too. A rolodex of this kind usually belongs to artists who have already proven themselves with a string of hit records. In Breland’s case, he garnered all of this support in less than five years.
says Nashville-based country music reporter Marcus K. Dowling, about how and why Breland can already be surrounded with such talent. “So if you’re an A-plus-level songwriter or if you’re a fantastic arranger-producer-composer and you’re also somebody who understands exactly what a vocal should sound like and you can do all of these things like Breland can? Then when you put him into those rooms, he is immediately a person of great value.”
The success of “My Truck” came at a time when genres, especially
hip-hop and country, were beginning to flirt with each other
more often, as more artists began to try different styles in
hopes of reaching a larger audience. While the song’s clever
songwriting and clean production kept it from being seen as a
gimmick, there was still a hint of “oh that’s different” to the
tune. But since then, more Black artists who were well known in
rap and R&B are stepping into cowboy boots, making it look
normal while making history in the process.
In 2022
we saw Chicago drill rapper Lil Durk link up with country bad
boy Morgan Wallen for the hit song “Broadway Girls.” The
following year former
Love & Hip Hop cast member K.
Michelle announced she was leaving her R&B career to start a
new one in country. In spring 2024, Beyoncé’s single “Texas Hold
‘Em” from her album
Cowboy Carter and
Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” marked the first time two Black
recording artists consecutively occupied the No.1 spot on the
Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. (Both songs peaked at No. 1
on the Billboard Hot
100, too.) In the months after that we’ve seen Quavo of Migos
enter the country chart with his Lana Del Rey collaboration
“Tough,” and LVRN, a label known for acts like 6lack and Summer
Walker, sign their first country artist, Tanner Adell, off the
strength of her trap-tinged country song “Buckle Bunny.”
Where many artists could view more people entering a lane as competition for attention, Breland still views it as an opportunity for everyone to thrive. But, as he stands on the sidewalk between Pride’s statue at the Ryman and the National Museum of African American Music right across the street, he does have a place in mind where competition could be welcome.
says Breland, well aware that the awards show is being taped in Los Angeles the same weekend we are speaking. As of 2024, there are no country music categories at the awards show. “We’re still probably a couple years away from that, but I do think it would be great, because we’re probably not going to fully be able to break down some of those other barriers within the country music world. So why not try something else? There’s a lot of artists in this space now that are making music at a high level. And I just think that exposure on a night like that would be really dope, man.”
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