The Grammy Performance That Triggered the Woke Race Hustlers

Last year, when country star Luke Combs' cover of "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman became a huge hit, woke leftists were triggered by its success.

“As Luke Combs’s hit cover of Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’ dominates the country charts, it’s bringing up some complicated emotions in fans & singers who know that Chapman, as a queer black woman, would have an almost zero chance at that achievement herself,” Washington Post entertainment writer Emily Yahr lamented at the time.

It didn't matter to Yahr or those interviewed for the article that “Fast Car” was nominated for three Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Chapman won Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best New Artist. Chapman has also won four Grammy Awards and had 13 nominations. To suggest that she was robbed of success because of her race just doesn't align with the facts. As for Chapman's inability to make a splash in the country music charts, well, the fact that she wasn't a country artist probably had something to do with that. Darius Rucker, the former frontman of Hootie & The Blowfish, has had tremendous success as a country singer. So much for Yahr's theory.

One person who wasn't buying into the so-called controversy surrounding the song was Tracy Chapman herself. “I never expected to find myself on the country charts, but I’m honored to be there. I’m happy for Luke and his success and grateful that new fans have found and embraced ‘Fast Car,’” she said in a statement to Billboard.

Unfortunately, some black people in the music industry didn't see it that way.

“On one hand, Luke Combs is an amazing artist, and it’s great to see that someone in country music is influenced by a Black queer woman—that's really exciting,” Holly G, founder of the Black country music organization Black Opry, told Yahr. “But at the same time, it’s hard to really lean into that excitement knowing that Tracy Chapman would not be celebrated in the industry without that kind of middleman being a white man.”

For our VIPs:  ‘Fast Car’ and the Left’s Neverending Quest to Racialize Everything

Tanner Davenport, a Nashville native and co-director of the Black Opry, said that the success of the cover “kind of just proves that when you put a white face on black art, it seems to be consumed a lot easier.”

Well, the joke's on them. On Sunday night, Chapman performed a duet of the song with Combs at the Grammy Awards.

"Nine years since her last live television performance, Tracy Chapman made a rare appearance at the 2024 Grammy Awards to sing her 1988 hit 'Fast Car' with Luke Combs, the country star who turned a new audience onto Chapman's song with his cover version and earned a Grammy nomination in the process," Rolling Stone reported. "In a video before the performance, Combs talked about the song's memorable opening guitar lick, a snippet that expertly telegraphed the performance that was to come: A tight shot on Chapman's hands playing her acoustic guitar slowly moved up to reveal her face and a broad grin. Chapman took the first verse, before Combs—standing at a microphone without a guitar—joined in with his verse and a big smile of his own."

You can watch the performance below.