Solange’s interest in Western imagery falls into a lineage of black hip-hop artists incorporating country sounds, from Bone Thugs ‘N’ Harmony and Nelly to Young Thug and her sister, Beyoncé. The yeehaw agenda, though, feels unprecedented in its reach—something Sargent suggests is rooted in an excitement of uncovering lost history. “The cowboy has meant so much to American identity,” he tells Pitchfork. “Before, there was this idea that black people were never cowboys and black people didn't have access to that quintessential part of an American identity. These images—and real history—say otherwise.”

The yeehaw agenda also questions what it means to philosophically embody the cowboy—something Mitski started probing last year. She wrote 2018’s Be the Cowboy, her celebrated fifth album, from the perspective of a character channeling the cowboy’s bravado and entitlement—the antithesis of the Orientalist stereotype that Asian women are submissive and meek. In an appearance on “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah,” Mitski explained, “There’s such an arrogance and freedom to [the cowboy that] is so appealing to me, especially since I am an Asian woman. I walk into a room and I feel like I have to apologize for existing.”

A newfound assuredness shows up in subtle ways throughout Be the Cowboy, manifesting in theatrical arrangements and intentional melodrama. Summer Kim Lee, a performance studies scholar at Dartmouth, notes that the cowboy persona seems to be most evident when Mitski broaches themes of chosen isolation; her song “Nobody” is, in a way, a celebration of being alone, and on “A Pearl,” the protagonist denies the touch of her partner. “The cowboy is a figure of loneliness and having open terrain. He has his boots at the door, and he’s ready to leave at any moment,” Lee tells Pitchfork. “If Kacey [Musgraves] is singing to that figure [on ‘Space Cowboy’], Mitski is saying, ‘I am that figure.’ It's not that she has someone breaking her heart; she’s the one that would actually break your heart.” Lee also suggests that there is a privilege in being able to walk away: “In terms of discussions around solidarity, people who occupy any kind of minority position can't afford to be alone.”

The Japanese-born Mitski has attributed her ambivalence toward isolation to the fact that her family moved around a lot, coupled with her usual long stretches of touring these days. But her call to “be the cowboy” also takes an added meaning when considering the dichotomy between wandering cowboys and Chinese laborers, who were integral to the construction of the first Transcontinental Railroad. “Cowboys were always those who passed through, whereas Asian laborers were really tied to their work in one place,” Lee notes. An Asian woman embodying that kind of freedom is unexpected—radical, even.

Mitski and Solange, as well as the larger yeehaw movement, subvert the longstanding legacy of the white cowboy by proposing that anyone can fill those boots. But being the cowboy, either mentally or aesthetically, might not necessarily be a good thing. Sargent expresses some concerns about the trend ultimately glamorizing the cowboy’s role in Western expansion. “I think it does move you away from some of those hard realities about how that westward march eradicated a Native America,” he says. “It's a complicated history.”

At its best, though, this cowboy focus opens up discussions around a previously hidden part of American history, amid a country-wide identity crisis of sorts. “The idea of America is in such flux right now,” Sargent points out. “We’re having this conversation about who gets to be American, and people are reconsidering their relationship to their own their own American identities. Because the cowboy is so tied up in that [identity], we’re having these conversations about who fits into those symbols of America.” Perhaps the yeehaw agenda will prompt more people to consider how the cowboy archetype is as troubled as America’s formation. It’s a new frontier, y’all.