If you just google Rissi Palmer, you’ll probably find a lot of sites focusing on the first thing you know about her after finding out that she’s a singer: the fact that she’s a black country artist is turning more than a few heads, especially since becoming the first black female artist to hit the country charts in the past 20 years, with her single County Girl.

But none of that really matters when you fire up her debut release.

It’s not bad. In fact, it’s pretty above average. None of the tracks really stand out and I think that’s the problem. She’s got a great voice I think - I find her nice to listen to, but if she were on the radio, I’d never pick her voice out of a crowd. They were too conservative in an attempt to get her radio airplay and to get past the inevitable complaints from lock-step Nashville radio (and country radio around the country) about her not being “country enough” that they stifled her creativity and distinctiveness in this debut.

But she’s on independent label and it took a good while to get this album out. My hope is that some major label will pick her up for her second album, that they’ll loosen the reins a bit and let her show what she can do. Because if they do, she’s got obvious star potential.

From a more cynical standpoint, no way that Cowboy Troy should have had the chance to put out TWO albums with more airplay than an actual country artist. Yeah, I realize he’s a gimmick and all, but he’s not even a good gimmick. I think the biggest crutch for Rissi is the fact that the mainstream media — which ignores country for the most part anyway — will only fixate on the fact that she’s black, won’t fire up any of her tracks and wouldn’t know if it wasn’t good in the first place.

I think that she’s got a decent trajectory towards being successful in the future, so check her out and keep an eye on what she does this year and beyond. I hope for her sake, that she tours a bit and gets out there on the rodeo circuit a bit. 

What she needs is better songwriters on her team that can help her find her niche, because the novelty factor isn’t going to sell many albums.  She’s way too talented for that anyway.