It begins with a harmonica and a throaty introduction promising bloodshed delivered by Jamie Foxx: “This is a tale about revenge and what lengths a woman will go to get hers.” The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales, Shaboozey’s fourth studio album, is a curve ball from the chart-topping country force. Instead of building on the success of his breakout single, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”, with an album of like-sounding hits, he constructed a sunbaked, sinister world—led by a heroine named Cherie Lee seeking vengeance against The Bootcut Boys, a gang of outlaws who murdered her sheriff father—for a proper concept album. This prompted a process change-up: Shaboozey and his collaborators wrote a script before jotting down a single musical note, as well as a graphic novel. “I would get chills reading some parts of this story,” he tells Apple Music. His long-time reverence for murder ballads and outlaw country is apparent in the rich instrumentation, the pensive guitar-picking and every lonesome harmonica solo, all of which helped bring Cherie to life while bolstering the album’s rebel spirit. “I get a lot of strength from the idea of an outlaw,” he explains, name-checking Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and others as inspirations. “When I read their stories and listen to their music, it’s like, man, they were kind of just like me. They weren’t always accepted or honoured the way that you would think. Those are the guys that we all look up to and want to be as country artists.” Still, there’s a reason why Shaboozey didn’t cast himself as the main character in Cherie’s story. “The truth is women are extremely powerful, and they’re formidable forces,” he says. “That’s just what I felt like was the only thing that could stop these outlaws.” Drama throbs throughout Cherie Lee, thanks in no small part to the weight of Shaboozey’s voice and those of the star-studded cast of collaborators he brought into his outlaw fold. Barn burner “Cowgirl”, the standout single, truly is “another bar song for you and all your friends”. Foxx isn’t the only actor on the tracklist: Sam Elliott, who’s played many a mustachioed cowboy/bandit/sheriff, portrays a bellowing lawman, and Teyana Taylor briefly speaks as Cherie herself at one point. Gunna’s bars anchor the foreboding trap-country anthem “High Noon”; Leon Bridges joins Shaboozey for the hazy “Burn It Down”, while Kehlani offers up verses she wrote herself on swoon-worthy duet “Bullets & Blades”. Shaboozey plays with perspective throughout, and even sings from the point of view of Cherie Lee on “Coyotes Point”—or does he? “I want people listening to think of those things I thought while in the studio,” he says. “Is he singing about himself? Is he singing about her? There’s not one way you can view this or listen to it. You could choose your own adventure in a way.”