A small radio station in Ada, Oklahoma, has sparked outrage among Beyoncé fans after refusing to play her music. In a now-viral post on X (formerly Twitter), one user decried the decision as a reason to justify reparations for African Americans.
The criticism first began to circulate after an X user by the handle @jussatto formally complained and accused the station of “blatant racism” after the station refused his request to play Beyoncé’s latest single Texas Hold ‘Em.
“I requested Texas Hold ‘Em at my local country radio station (KYKC) and after requesting, I received an email from the radio station stating ‘we do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station.'” @jussatto posted, including a screenshot of the email he received.
“This station needs to be held accountable for their blatant racism and discrimination against Beyoncé,” the user continued in a followup post.
The viral post sparked additional commentary, with other users using it as an example of systemic discrimination against African Americans.
“‘Why do Black people need reparations?’ asked the white supremacist. This is why. Systematic shut out of Black people in business, life, etc,” another user wrote in response to a headline on the incident at KYKC.
While some supported the sentiment, pointing to the fact that many “urban black radio” stations play rap music by white artists, others were confused about what refusing to play an R&B singer’s music on a country station had to do with reparations or racism.
“This situation and reparations have absolutely nothing to do with each other,” responded one X user by the handle @quincylsb. “It kills me to see you’ll constantly cry for handouts online.”
“I am sorry, your argument for reparations is because a disc [jockey] didn’t play a song request?” added another.
Although 100.1 KYKC initially defended its decision not to play Beyoncé’s latest single from her upcoming country-themed album, the station’s general manager Roger Harris clarified what had happened.
“We initially refused to play it in the same manner if someone requested us to play the Rolling Stones on our country station. [The] fact is we play Beyoncé on TWO of our other stations and love her… she is an icon. We just didn’t know about the song … then when we found out about it, we tried to get the song….which we did and we have already played it 3 times on KYKC, our country station,” Harris said in an interview with Today.
Explaining that KYKC is a smaller station that typically waits to see how certain songs fare on bigger stations before airing them, Harris added: “We are not a ‘big boy’ station and getting record companies to service us is tough,” he said. “But…finally we got our hands on it, and based on the fan support, we decided to air it…truthfully, normally we would (usually) wait a while to see how the song performs on the charts and on bigger country stations than ours, as we are just the little guys.”
Concluding, he stressed that the station loves Beyoncé, and it fully supports her crossover into country music. “We love Beyoncé. We just were behind this country music changeover… But, now that she’s coming out as a country artist, we want to be all over it … We are not fools … we know how big she is, and we are happy to air it and wish her the best success.”
Beyoncé’s full release, which is “Act II” to her smash-hit album “Renaissance,” will be available on March 29.
