There’s nothing shocking about Rissi Palmer’s music.
The 26-year-old singer from Sewickley, Pa., whose self-titled debut album comes out Tuesday, is a country artist whose songs about small-town values and broken hearts would fit seamlessly on radio playlists alongside Keith Urban and Faith Hill.

But if the music doesn’t catch you by surprise, the person singing it does. Palmer is black, and her single “Country Girl,” which expresses its bona fides with pride (”I’m whatcha might call real corn-fed, I’m a country girl, born and bred”) is the first by an African American woman to hit the Billboard Hot Country chart (currently No. 54) since Dona Mason’s “Green Eyes (Cryin’ Those Blue Tears)” 20 years ago.

“When I walk into a room, people don’t think I’m a country singer,” Palmer says, living up to her first name, which means “to laugh” in Portuguese. More likely, they think she’s an R&B diva or a neo-soul singer in the making, options she might have pursued if she had signed a contract offered her by the Janet Jackson production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

“That was a hard deal to pass up,” says Palmer, who couldn’t put pen to paper because “I couldn’t imagine singing something I couldn’t feel sincere about.” And what she’s sincere about, she says - sitting at a hotel on City Avenue after a recent appearance at country station WXTU-FM (92.5) and before flying back to her home base of Nashville - is country music. - more

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