Shaboozey kicked off a fresh chapter in his music with a cinematic, storytelling record on Friday (July 31).

The history-making, Grammy-winning artist delivered his fourth studio album, The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales. The 20-track project includes “Cowgirl,” “Burn it Down” with Leon Bridges and “Born To Die,” plus star-studded, genre-blending collaborations with Jamie Foxx, Gunna, Tayana Taylor, Kehlani and Sam Elliott. The highly-anticipated concept project is hailed the record breaker’s “most cinematic and diverse album yet,” telling a classic American tale “of revenge and doomed love that pushes his trademark trail-blazing, genre-colliding style even further,” states a press release. Cherie Lee’s star-studded features mark the singer-songwriter’s “widest and wildest array of collaborators to date.” The release explains of the storytelling album:

“The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales is a cinematic outlaw revenge story with a tragic love at its center. After watching her sheriff father murdered by the Bootcut Boys, Cherie Lee abandons the badge and hunts the gang down one by one. In the middle of her vengeance, she unexpectedly falls for one of the outlaws. He believes loving her can redeem him; she hopes loving him can quiet her darkness. They’re both wrong. In the final act, Cherie chooses blood over love, killing the man who loves her most and fully becoming what she set out to destroy. An ambitious display of everything Shaboozey is as an artist and a storyteller, The Outlaw Cherie Lee finds Shaboozey building a vibrant, complex world and taking his songwriting and storytelling to new heights.”

“I've always had these crazy, ambitious ideas,” Shaboozey said in a statement. Some of his inspirations for Cherie Lee include Pink Floyd’s The Wall and other iconic concept records, plus Sergio Leone films. “Cherie Lee is just me wanting to be a storyteller. I love Westerns, and they’re an awesome form of storytelling — American folk tales and folklore, gunfighter ballads, trail songs. Country music isn’t always as clean as people think. I wanted to create a world of villains, romance, violence, and vulnerability — the throughlines of country and hip-hop.”

Shaboozey marked the whirlwind Cherie Lee release week with an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and on the TODAY plaza in New York City. In September, the “A Bar Song” hitmaker will kick off his “Outlaws Never Die Tour,” which includes special guests BigXThaPlug, Kashus Culpepper, Noah Cyrus, Carter Faith, Brittney Spencer, Noeline Hofmann, and Angel White. Scroll below to find the full list of tour stops.

“Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going [2024] was a journal entry and an opportunity for the world to get to know more about me as a person,” Shaboozey said in a statement when he announced Cherie Lee’s release date earlier this year. “That album changed my life. I never expected people to connect with the album and enjoy it the way they did. But now I want to show the world who I am as an artist and storyteller. The Outlaw Cherie Lee is a project that’s been several years in the making and has gone through many iterations. It’s a western about revenge told continuously through every song, centered on the character Cherie Lee. It explores so many themes, as many timeless westerns have: revenge, redemption, and romance, through the eyes of a protagonist looking to challenge everything she once thought true about her world. I poured all of myself into this and I hope people become as immersed in the world and the journey as I have. This album was a promise to myself and something, no matter what, I had to keep. It pushed my songwriting and storytelling to new heights, and I couldn’t be more proud to say it’s done and almost yours.”

Find Shaboozey’s music on iHeartRadio here.

Jeff Benton