A rising country star is performing in Utah – for free

Downtown Salt Lake is pulling out all the stops to kick off the Utah Hockey Club's highly anticipated home game, including organizing a concert featuring a rising country star who's had a No. 1 hit for 13 weeks.

Shaboozey comes to Utah amid the success of “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”

Hockey fans will be treated to a free Shaboozey concert outside the Delta Center on Tuesday, hours before Utah HC takes on the Chicago Blackhawks, the Deseret News previously reported.

The show comes at a time when Shaboozey is enjoying the longest No. 1 hit of the year (so far) and the third longest of this decade, according to Billboard.

The success of “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” makes Shaboozey, a Nigerian-American rapper and singer from Virginia, a likely Grammy nominee for best new artist and best record of the year, according to Variety.

Shaboozey is nominated for best new artist at the Country Music Association Awards next month.

“A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is the biggest country hit of the 2020s, recently surpassing Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night.”

Shaboozey's free concert will take place Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. and portions of it will be featured on ESPN's broadcast of the Utah Hockey Club's season-opening coverage, the Deseret News reported.

Who is Shaboozey?

It was a breakthrough year for Shaboozey. The 29-year-old artist, who is the child of Nigerian immigrants, created his stage name after his high school football coach misspelled his real name, Collins Chibueze, according to Billboard.

According to NPR, Shaboozey gained widespread acclaim when his blend of hip-hop and country was featured on Beyonce's debut country album, Cowboy Carter, earlier this year.

Beyonce featured Shaboozey on two tracks – “Sweet*Honey*Buckiin'” and “Spaghettii”, which also featured Linda Martell, the first commercially successful black female country musician who is hailed as the genre's “unsung heroine,” according to Martell's website.

But Shaboozey's latest success comes a few years after the artist entered the industry. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is from his third studio album “Where I've Been, Isn't Where I'm Going.” The singer-songwriter released his first single “Jeff Gordon” in 2014 and his debut album in 2018.

Shaboozey was also featured on “Start a Riot”, a song from the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse soundtrack.

“I’ve been making music for so long, I’ve put a lot of time and years into it,” Shaboozey told People. “I've put so much into it that it's just cool to see how it works. Everyone hopes it works. Seeing it actually work is unreal.”

Now at the top of the charts, Shaboozey is considering some major awards that could help continue the momentum of his career.

“This is the top of the mountain as far as recognition goes,” Shaboozey told Billboard of his possible Grammy winners. “This is a long-standing ceremony, it has history and tradition, and we hope we can take it home with us. The childhood fear of never winning anything is still there. It would mean the world to win one of these things, but if not, the year we had would be crazy. If not now, it will come. We’re in the club now.”