Rissi Palmer’s music journey started when she was four years old, singing at church. Ever since, music has been a defining character of her life. 

Palmer has an extraordinary set of accomplishments when it comes to her music career. She is one of just nine black women to be on the Billboard Country Charts with her single “Country Girl.” Her success comes from years of resistance and voicing her truth in an industry that has often sidelined artists of color, insisting on making room for herself. 

“I’ve had the rare privilege of watching her evolve—not just as an artist, but as a leader, a mother, and a force in the music industry,” Schatzi Hageman, Palmer’s publicist, said. “She’s never taken shortcuts and has always chosen the path of authenticity, even when it’s been the more difficult one.”

For many musicians of color entering the country music scene, Palmer said there’s a pressure to fit in, to smooth out the parts that don’t match Nashville’s traditional image of country music. 

Palmer explored ways to express her full identity in Nashville — a vital space in the music industry, but one that’s predominantly white. She then moved from Nashville to North Carolina and started her journey as an independent artist. 

“I’m not going to worry about what the press or anybody thinks about me,” Palmer said. “I’m just going to make the music that I want to hear and that I want to make and that only I can make.”

Living in Raleigh has changed Palmer’s perspective of being an artist. In North Carolina, she loves that she could be a national recording artist and still feel “normal”. 

Palmer grew up listening to The Judds and has used them as a source of inspiration for her own music. The Judds, Naromi and Wynonna Judd, were highly influential in the American country music genre. She aims to portray the theme of resistance in all of her music. 

“I think that it’s really the job of the artist, as James Baldwin said, to reflect the world and the culture back to the listener,” Palmer said. “It’s our job, and I take that job really seriously. I also think that we all as artists need to remember, especially in times like these, that joy is a form of resistance.”

Her song that was released this month, “Old Black Southern Woman”, is about her mother who passed away at the age of 30. 

“Now that I am past the age that she was when she died, I feel like it’s almost my job to be the kind of woman that my mother would’ve been and the type of woman that my mother would be proud of,” Palmer said. “And at the same time, I wanted to use the song to honor black women in general.” 

Palmer is not just a musician. In 2020, she used the pandemic as an opportunity to start a conversation about the racial reckoning of country music.

Her radio show, “Color Me Country,” stems from Linda Martel’s album of the same name.  Martel is the first black woman to ever perform at the Grand Ole Opry, one of the biggest stages for country music artists. Building on that legacy, Palmer created the Color Me Country Artist Grant Fund, to support artists of color emerging in the country music scene. 

Palmer has recently received the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Lift Every Voice Award for her work uplifting underrepresented voices in “Color Me Country.” 

“She is someone who has found new ways to share her art with us, whether that be through song or through curation or through her radio show,” said Amara Hall, the producer for “Color Me Country.”