'Preaching to the choir isn't expansion': Jimmie Allen's unique path to stardom

By the end of 2023, Jimmie Allen could be the only musician to both hip-hop dance with Carrie Underwood and bodyslam WWE Undisputed Champion Roman Reigns inside Lower Broadway's Bridgestone Arena.

Add rolling a perfect 300-game of bowling, hosting a music festival attended by 5,000 people in his hometown of Milton, Delaware, joining Mickey Guyton, Kacey Musgraves, Orville Peck and Reese Witherspoon on the Mar. 24-premiering Apple+ TV music competition series "My Kind of Country" and serving as the keynote commencement speaker at his alma mater Delaware State University to his list of accomplishments -- and the surface has barely been scratched.

The success has deeper connectivity for the country star. He's merely just following in his father, "Big Jim" Allen's, footsteps.

Jimmie's father passed away in September 2019.

"He was the redneck of the family," Allen joked. "A small-town boy, country guy. Military, played sports, listened to nothing but country music. I'm talking like nothing -- you change the dial on his radio and you'll get punched in the forehead."

To The Tennessean, he adds, "my father was a big advocate for finding everything you love and doing all of it."

Using social media to understand the reasoning for Allen's hustle is ideal. He has big aspirations for success, following the multimedia footsteps of the artists and celebrities he aligns with.

Underwood, for whom Allen is opening on her 43-date nationwide Denim and Rhinestones arena tour -- which visits Bridgestone Arena on Mar. 1 -- has over 12 million Instagram followers. WWE and his co-host for "My Kind Of Country," Reese Witherspoon, have nearly 30 million apiece.

Allen? He has just north of 400,000.

If Allen's brand of entertainment or performance continues gaining support, he could easily reach Underwood's level of success in under a decade.

He isn't chasing clout, though. Instead, his brand of earnest, soulful and broad-appealing showmanship is growing in appeal.

Underwood told USA Today about working with Allen, "[Jimmie] has a lot of momentum in his career, a lot of radio success. I feel like the audience would know and enjoy him. He's a showman, for sure. He has a great voice, is nice to be around and is funny and easygoing. You want to like the people you're on the road with. He sings songs about Jesus in his set and so do I. And he's very bling-y, so he's quite a good fit for 'Denim & Rhinestones.'"

Roughly halfway through his run with the country music icon, Allen states that he's learning more than ever about the discipline, focus and presentation required to achieve a level of stardom where "being up there flying around" meets the height of fanbase expectations.

Also, in pursuit of his goals, the "Best Shot" vocalist has developed notoriously poor sleep habits.

He's averaging four hours of sleep nightly these days.

He blames the hazards of maintaining his intra-continental travel schedule across multiple time zones alongside his tireless work ethic as the culprit.

"Sleeping for eight hours causes you to miss a third of the day. If you live on the west coast and get up at 10 a.m., it's 1 p.m. on the east coast -- people over there have been getting after it already, so you're already behind."

He lists mentors, including comedian and television host Steve Harvey, who have advised him that though it's difficult, maintaining a schedule where much fewer than eight hours of sleep occurs nightly is ideal.

"To reach the financial and personal success that I would like to achieve in the next decade for myself and my family, I have to put in the work and not fall behind."

Allen's coming up on two years of marriage to his wife, Alexis. He is the father of a son named Aaydn from a previous relationship and daughters Naomi and Zara from his relationship with his wife.

Achieving comfort and generational wealth for his family is among the many goals he's aggressively set forth to achieve.

The performer's 37 years old and has spent six years signed to BMG subsidiary Stoney Creek Records after moving to Music City in 2007. By 2021, he'd claimed both New Male Artist of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards and the Country Music Association Award for New Artist of the Year.

Thus, given that he's rapidly closing in on the rare achievement of having appeared on ABC, CBS and NBC, plus Amazon Prime (as the co-host of 2022's ACM Awards) and Apple+ TV in the past twelve months -- plus having also just topped Billboard and Mediabase's charts for the fourth time with the single "down home" -- he's somehow arriving at his desired success both in a hurry and right on time.

Typically, country music stars depend on a waterfall of chart-topping success to herald their rise to greater renown. Modern-era breakout superstar Luke Combs had 13 consecutive No. 1 singles on country radio. Charley Pride's legacy is tied to being a singular African-American country star who achieved 29 No. 1 singles in just under two decades.

However, Allen is keenly aware that he is a product of an era wherein singles like his recent No. 1 "down home" took nine months to achieve chart-topping success. Even deeper, his friend Lainey Wilson's "Things A Man Oughta Know" took almost twice as long as "down home" to ring the bell on top of the charts.

"We're prisoners to the opinion of others and the standards that they set," says Allen.

"I'm more about the number of diverse audience impressions my tracks can receive compared to how they do on the charts. If I have a top-five single that doesn't hit No. 1 -- but five million new ears have heard me -- that matters more than how a single's success looks on paper."

To wit, Allen's recorded songs with Elton John, Jennifer Lopez, and Brad Paisley (their collaboration "Freedom Was a Highway" hit No. 1 on country's radio charts in Feb. 2022), plus Pitbull and T-Pain (among many others).

Moreover, he makes the distinction that he wants more "hits" than chart-toppers. To the performer, that differentiation is vital.

"Can you remember how many No. 1 singles there have been in the past five years? It's not the heights a song reaches that matters. The width of how many people a song touches is more important."

When asked about his unique position as a leader of a growing number of African-American country music stars (alongside Blanco Brown, Kane Brown, BRELAND and Darius Rucker who also have surged in renown) and mainstream-appealing country music, Allen is quick to engage with a response excitedly.

"People always think I'm trying to take country music 'pop' or something. I'm just trying to redefine what country music can look and sound like in pop culture. There are still people in the world who have never heard of Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, Luke Combs, Blake Shelton, or Morgan Wallen -- but because they watched 'Dancing With The Stars,' [ABC sitcom] 'The Conners,' NASCAR racing, PBA Tour bowling or pro wrestling, they know who I am and that I make country music. These are people who will discover a Maren Morris or Sam Hunt, potentially, as well as a Brooks and Dunn or George Strait. It's all good for the genre."

"Preaching to the choir isn't expansion," says Allen succinctly.

Moreover, Allen co-manages the duo Neon Union (Leo Brooks and Andrew Millsaps), the first act signed to JAB Entertainment, Allen's full-service management and production company he launched alongside his business partners John Marks and Aaron Benward.

"I love the way that hip-hop culture did it, especially Lil Wayne. Lil Wayne signed Drake and Nicki Minaj. Drake signed The Weeknd and took him out. It's all about using your platform to break your artists," Allen notes. "If you sign someone, you're investing. The more successful they become, the more successful your business becomes. I'm trying to take that same approach and do it in the country world."

About reaching that point as an African-American country artist, Allen notes, "Black artists in Nashville look at people like myself and realize that we don't have to be followers, but we can be trendsetting leaders in this genre, too."

When asked about feeling pressure to achieve his next set of career-changing goals, Allen pauses, then chuckles confidently.

"I'm doing honest work that meets the level of my talent. If I keep growing at the rate that I am, I'll reach a point where my greatest prominence can occur. I think I'm ready for that. No sane person expects to fail. So what's next for me won't shock me at all."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Jimmie Allen's pop-culture success is redefining his country stardom