Mickey Guyton Says She Found Success After Fully Embracing Her Blackness

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Mickey Guyton has been on a roll and breaking down barriers. She's been recently nominated for a Country Music Association Award in this year's Female Vocalist of the Year category, she became the first Black woman to be nominated for a Grammy in the country category, and more.

Now, Guyton is opening up about the struggles she faced earlier on in her career, and how she found the inspiration to continue pushing forward. In a new interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, the "Black Like Me" singer revealed that she spent her first several years in Nashville running "away from my Blackness." Hoping to make a career in country music, Guyton explained she had wanted to fit in and has said in the past she had been told she would fail as a Black woman in country music.

But Guyton pushed forward. She revealed that her husband was the catalyst, explaining to Guyton during a conversation about why she had not found success that it was because "you're running away from everything that makes you different. Why aren't you singing country songs from your perspective?"

His words led to the singles "Black Like Me" and "Love My Hair," which have found Guyton fully embracing who she is and making waves while doing so. However, Guyton has also explained that she does continue to face racism within the industry via online bullying from fans. Still not wanting that to discourage her and all her successes, she's said that she aims to take time away from social media and avoids reading other people's comments.

Guyton has also been determined to utilize her platform to uplift other Black artists, helping to break down further barriers within the industry. "I started just looking for every Black country artists that I could find and posting about it, because I knew a lot of people in my industry follow me," Guyton said. "So, I thought I would just start putting them out there and showing them on my page."

With everything else Guyton has been busy with over recent months, the singer also became a mom just seven months ago. She recently opened up about the struggles of becoming a new mom, sharing that "one of the things that was so hard and that I wasn't prepared was the 4th trimester. That's something that not many people speak about, and they should." While having a new baby was an adjustment, Guyton gushed that she's been enjoying seeing him watch the world through his own eyes.


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