Texans Beyoncé, Post Malone team up for sultry 'Levii's Jeans' on her new album

There's likely one big reason Beyoncé featured Post Malone on her new album "Cowboy Carter."

They grew up 300 miles apart along Interstate 45 in Texas — Post grew up between Dallas and Fort Worth in Grapevine and Beyoncé is from Houston.

Now they appear together on the sultry pop anthem "Levii's Jeans."

Their Texas roots now involve an anthem to lovestruck blue jeans alongside a love of everything from Red Dirt boot-scooting to Miranda Lambert ballads.

And Malone's no country newcomer. He sang Joe Diffie's "John Deere Green" and "Pickup Man" with HARDY and Morgan Wallen at the recent Country Music Association Awards. Not to mention the multiplatinum "Rockstar" vocalist sang "America The Beautiful" accompanied by a steel guitarist at this year's Super Bowl.

At numerous moments in his decadelong rise to pop superstardom, he's shown himself as comfortable wearing a bolo tie and playing an acoustic guitar as he is dropping bars about basketball hall-of-famer Allen Iverson.

In 2021, he performed Sturgill Simpson's "You Can Have the Crown" and Brad Paisley's "I'm Gonna Miss Her" on Matthew McConaughey's "We're Texas" fundraising event after Winter Storm Uri.

Beyoncé first announced her eighth studio album during a surprise Super Bowl commercial on Feb. 11. Simultaneously, she released her first two singles, "16 Carriages" and "Texas Hold 'Em." The two songs quickly took the internet by storm as many fans saw the music as a reclamation of country music's Black roots. On YouTube, Beyoncé reached over 2 million views on each song in just two days. Within weeks, Beyoncé made history as the first Black woman to top Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart when "Texas Hold 'Em" hit No. 1.

The new album is "Act II" of a three-part series. The superstar released her first act, the "Renaissance" album, on July 29, 2022, through her company Parkwood Entertainment and Columbia Records. "Act III" has yet to be announced.

Prior to its release, the singer opened up about "Cowboy Carter" on Instagram. Beyoncé wrote while she was "honored" to become the first Black woman to Black woman to top Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart, she still hopes for the day "the mention of an artist's race, as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant."

She revealed the new album took five years to make, adding it was "born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed … and it was very clear that I wasn't." The singer was likely referencing her 2016 performance of her song "Daddy Lessons" with The Chicks at the Country Music Association Awards, which received mixed reactions on social media.

"But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive," she wrote. "The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me. act ii is a result of challenging myself and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work."

She signed off with, "This ain’t a Country album. This is a 'Beyoncé' album."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Texans Beyoncé, Post Malone team up for sultry 'Levii's Jeans'