Back in August the 29-year-old country singer Shaboozey gave the packed audience at the Grammy Museum some advice for staying healthy on the road.

Whenever he plays his smash hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which has topped the Hot 100 for nine weeks and counting, he swigs from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The two have “got a history,” he touts in the song’s chorus.

But after one especially raucous show, Shaboozey recalled a manager taking him aside backstage. “They said, ‘You know you can put iced tea in there instead,’” the singer said and laughed.

Later that night, when he performed the song twice in a row, he indeed pulled a bottle of Jack for the big moment. Who knows what was actually in there, but if it was whiskey, Shaboozey definitely deserved a real shot.

The singer-songwriter, a Virginia-raised child of Nigerian-American parents, has become the breakout country artist of the year, appearing on Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” and dominating charts with “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” His single has ruled the generalist Hot 100 and country radio alike — a feat not even Beyoncé pulled off. His LP “Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going” belongs on any list of the year’s most important country records.

Shaboozey’s been embraced by country’s establishment, but as a young Black man in America’s most conservative music format, he’s under no illusions about it. His songwriting is bracing and melancholy in ways “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” barely suggests. After his raucous ascent on the back of a huge hit, will country fans stay for the real thing?

“I’ve been going to Stagecoach for years, walking through there when nobody knows who you are, and you’re one of very few people of color at that whole festival,” he said. “Who would have known, like, two years later that same dude is playing to 60,000 people screaming.”

On a blazing afternoon at a Culver City photo studio, Shaboozey arrives a little frazzled, after a meeting with a vocal doctor to get in the best possible shape for his upcoming headline tour, where he’ll play major theaters. Born Collins Chibueze, his artist name is a riff on a nickname, given by a high school football coach who failed at spelling his name right.

In person, he’s tall and commanding, still with the muscular frame of a young athlete, but also the soft-spoken baritone of someone who’s worked out a lot of complicated feelings in his songwriting.

That day, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” was still in the saddle atop the Hot 100 and the country airplay charts, making Shaboozey arguably the buzziest singer in the most influential genre in America right now.

The single is diabolically perfect in its craft. It discreetly calls back to J-Kwon’s 2004 hit “Tipsy,” an elder-millennial college-party staple, but does so less as a straight cover than by using the song as a reference point for nostalgia and longing for release. (It’s a classic-country songwriting move; a similar trick drives Cole Swindell’s “She Had Me at Heads Carolina.”)

The chorus is boisterously chantable on a big night out, but its lyrics are flintier than you think (“Gasoline and groceries, the list goes on and on/ This 9 to 5 ain’t workin’, why the hell do I work so hard?”).

Country and rap, historically pitted against each other, have always been cousins, whose sounds have intertwined closely over recent years. Shaboozey understood both as a common reference point for younger country fans, using that sweaty party anthem for a sly twist on the drinking-song tradition.

“It’s just a staple of country music, the drinking song,” Shaboozey said. “But I knew the world was looking for something unique. Y2K is coming back, everyone’s playing 2000’s music already, and ‘Tipsy” was a big party song. So you fill it up a little bit, this equation, just in time for summer. I feel like we ticked all the boxes, but we put a lot of work in to be ready for a moment like that.”

That moment paid off across formats, topping country airplay charts when like-minded songs by Lil Nas X (“Old Town Road”) and Beyoncé (“Texas Hold ’Em”) never came close.

This wasn’t an obvious outcome, to say the least. Shaboozey began his music career more overtly rap-aligned, even as his breakthrough single “Jeff Gordon” was named for the NASCAR driver. He released his debut LP, “Lady Wrangler,” on Republic in 2018. He’d moved to L.A. that year with a record deal and a bit of cash floated from his mother to pursue his dreams, but he didn’t find much community for his country-crossover sound. “There’s like (Hollywood bar) Desert 5 Spot and that’s about it,” he said and laughed. “L.A.’s not really a hub for that. It’s hard trying to find those spaces here. I hope more open up.”

His sound inched closer to country instrumentation, like on 2022’s “Why Can’t Cowboys Cry?” off “Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die” on the indie Empire, though nothing hit the Hot 100 or country charts. But the industry took notice behind the scenes. He was driving a friend’s borrowed car around West Hollywood when he got the call that changed his life: Beyoncé wanted him in the studio for a concept album drawing on the Black roots of country music, and the outlaw place that Black people carved out in a country that can still hate and fear them.

Shaboozey brought a regal, trap-infused croon to the banger “Spaghettii,” and a nimble R&B run to “Sweet Honey Buckiin’,” each highlights of an album bearing witness to a Black culture intertwined with American cowboy archetypes.

“It felt like I was where I was meant to be,” he said. “You’re not brought there to be nervous. You’re there to do what you do best.”

Shaboozey admired Bey for taking the risk to make a country-inspired album with no guarantee of being embraced by Nashville (its reaction to her barnstorming 2016 CMA performance with the Chicks was mixed, to say the least).

“We’re aligned on seeing the mirrors between hip-hop and country, and being Black and being an outlaw,” Shaboozey said. “Having to protect yourself, being forced to band together to survive.”