2010: Mud Digger Vol. 1
Nashville-based Average Joe’s Entertainment — founded by Colt Ford, a drawling cowboy rapper who loves chicken, biscuits, and college football; and former So So Def producer/engineer Shannon Houchins — has been the Def Jam of country-rap crossover since releasing the former’s Ride Through the Country in late 2008. But it was the label’s 2010 Mud Digger comp that revealed hick-hop’s maturation into a fully realized subgenre, one loaded with artists who take their work seriously. The record’s biggest hit, Colt Ford and Brantley Gilbert’s “Dirt Road Anthem,” which places nostalgic small-town raps over a shuffling guitar-and-drum-machine beat, would eventually become a No. 1 hit for Jason Aldean. But tracks like the funky hootenanny “Shindig” (“Lovin’ them girls, chasin’ them squirrels”) and the eponymous “Mud Digger” (which flips Gorilla Zoe’s “Hood Nigga” just as “Mud Bog Paint Job” later flipped Dorrough’s “Ice Cream Paint Job”) proved influential in their own right. Three years and two compilations later, the label is stronger than ever, releasing records featuring hick-hoppers past (Bubba Sparxxx, Nappy Roots) and future (Redneck Social Club, the Lacs, Lenny Cooper), assembling a thick roster of performers united by a passion for off-roading and the belief that rural Southern identity is best expressed via an art form that’s got its roots in urban New York. N.M.
2011: Colt Ford ft. Nappy Roots and Nick Cowan – “Waste Some Time”
Georgia hick-hopper Ford has landed five singles on the lower rungs of Billboard‘s country chart in recent years, taking a cue from rappers by filling his annual albums with lots of collaborations — mostly country guys (Jason Aldean, Montgomery Gentry, Kix Brooks, Darius Rucker, Tim McGraw), but sometimes rap guys: Bone Crusher on 2009’s Steve Miller-sampling, patty-melt-gobbling, sumo-weight summit “Gangsta Of Love”; and D.M.C. in 2010’s hell-raising, heavy-boogying biker rocker “Ride On.” For 2011’s “Waste Some Time,” he hooked up with rustic Kentucky rap group Nappy Roots, and while the result wasn’t as funky as “Wasting Time” by Kid Rock, the video at a lakeside summer party did feature plenty of water slides and Ford doing the Heavy D wobble (and, uh, few if any black attendees who weren’t in Nappy Roots). The rapping offered approval of riding deep in the sticks and cooking the entire hog — from the roota to the toota, as rustic Georgia rappers Field Mob (who Ford has surprisingly yet to work with) would say. Also, somebody named Nick Cowan, seemingly a jam-bandish hippie crooner of the Zac Brown ilk, shows up. But he doesn’t get in the way too much. C.E.
2011: Jason Aldean ft. Ludacris – “Dirt Road Anthem (Remix)”
In 2008, Colt Ford did this song with Brantley Gilbert, with whom he’d written it; in 2010, Gilbert “revisited” it with Colt Ford on Gilbert’s album, Halfway To Heaven — though the track where he really gets his “dirty dirty South down heah” lingo right is that album’s “Kick It in the Sticks.” Anyway, Georgian hitmaker Jason Aldean — similarly fond of false-metal riffs, but less principled about it — was next to borrow “Dirt Road Anthem” in 2011, and got a No. 1 country single for his efforts, doing the quasi-rap parts himself, whereupon Ludacris joined him at the CMT Music Awards to help out. Luda’s on the remix for half a minute, remembering the joys of water balloons, Super Soakers, wet T-shirts, bikinis, Kenny Rogers, penny loafers, and six-packs on ice. Aldean’s own verses reminisce more about intoxicated driving (“Laid back swervin’ like I’m George Jones…an ice cold beer sittin’ in the console”) and jumping barbed wire at Pott’s farm and lighting a bonfire, then punching out some jerk for spreading nasty rumors. Luda’s party sounds less dangerous, but Aldean manages to make his feel like a summer breeze regardless. C.E.
2011: Struggle Jennings ft. Yelawolf and Waylon Jennings – “Outlaw Shit”
One of the many fascinating trends that arose out of the Internet hip-hop moment of 2011 — the year Odd Future and Black Hippy broke — was the small contingent of profoundly sincere “redneck rappers,” like Rittz and Yelawolf, who spit like Bone Thugs but for whom a “pocket full of stones” meant falling off your dirt bike in cargo pants. None had more country cred than Struggle, the actual grandson of Waylon Jennings. On “Outlaw Shit,” he samples his mom’s pops, and bemoans the life of scrapping and fighting that dominates the South’s white working class. It’s a touching song, which earns it use of Waylon’s sober hook, sampled from a song of the same name off 2008’s posthumous Waylon Forever. In an interview with the Nashville Scene, Struggle diagnosed the problem with most country rap: “It’s either been corny rap or corny country, none of it’s been real.” “Outlaw Shit” was his solution. B.S.
Hick-Hop Wave Two
As long as rednecks grow up hearing hip-hop, new generations of country rappers are likely inevitable — and it can’t hurt that Colt Ford has recruited more than a few to the Average Joe’s Entertainment label he founded in 2008, or that guys like Jason Aldean have made country radio safe for rapping, or that big-ass trucks with gigantic tires can look somewhat rad sloshing through mud on YouTube. The latest hick-hop wave gets millions of hits…just not the kind that tear up the charts. It also seems, for the most part, to highlight groups, or at least duos. The Lacs, for instance, are two Average Joe’s-signed South Georgia boys given to Jeff Foxworthy/Larry the Cable Guy-inspired skits and country strip-pole-rock collaborations with Big & Rich and Bubba Sparxxx. Their name stands for “Loud Ass Crackers,” and their “Kickin’ Up Mud” was popular in line-dance palaces, but they’re best at getting smooth — i.e., swiping the guitar riff from OMC’s “How Bizarre” in “Country Boy Fresh.” Jawga Boyz, also from the Peach State as their name reveals if you drawl it correctly, are simultaneously crunkier (Pastor Troy helps out) and more Everlast-emo. Their “Ridin’ High” video paradoxically flaunts both Confederate flags and African-American friends (not to mention muddy trucks). Also, they do a song advertising the “Mudjug,” which appears to be a receptacle in which to spit tobacco juice.
Maryland/Indiana pair LoCash Cowboys, who gave Tim McGraw an embarrassing 2012 hit called “Truck Yeah” — where he claimed to rock Lil Wayne on his iPod — start one obligatory number with “Let’s talk about mud, let’s talk about trucks,” but really they seem more like frat-party bros with sappy love-ballad tendencies. They cite ’80s R&B and Justin Timberlake as influences, and they’ve actually country-charted three singles, though none peaked higher than No. 32. There’s probably still a glass ceiling for this kinda stuff: Likable Ohio/Tennessee trio Trailer Choir, lightweight in sound if not on the scale, called it quits last year after charting four songs, none higher than No. 30; their heftiest member went on to drop 184 pounds on The Biggest Loser. So alternate business plans are worth considering. For example, Brooklyn Americana-rap collective Gangstagrass managed to land the theme song for TV’s Justified while covering some 1920s Dock Boggs on the side. Hick-hop for Alabama Shakes fans: There are worse ideas out there, no doubt. And frankly, naming your album Rappalachia might be one of them. C.E.
2012: B.o.B and Taylor Swift – “Both of Us”
Country? Not really. Rap? Only by technicality. The sawing bass drops suggest dubstep, but the production credits give it away: With Dr. Luke (“Since You Been Gone,” “Teenage Dream,” “Dynamite”) and Cirkut (“Where Have You Been,” “Good Feeling”) behind the boards, “Both of Us” is pure pop, completely oblivious to the long, storied histories of the genres it so casually plunders. “It happened naturally,” said crossover rapper B.o.B. of how he and crossover country singer Taylor Swift wound up in the same room. “She actually arranged for me to come to Dallas and brought me out, and I played her the song and she liked it.” Unencumbered by the authenticity issues that plague both rap and country, fans of both artists agreed, making the single the third off B.o.B.’s Strange Clouds to reach the Hot 100’s top 20. N.M.
2013: Brad Paisley and LL Cool J – “Accidental Racist”/ “Live For You”
The immediately notorious, fairly confusing, dissertation-ready song “Accidental Racist” casts Brad Paisley as an unapologetic redneck espousing both a quasi-liberal apologia and stereotypical defensiveness in order to wear his Confederate flag shirt in a Starbucks — where no doubt SNL‘s racist depiction of “Verquanica” serves up his double latte with three snaps in a “Z” formation. LL Cool J, whose Kangol thread has been lost for a good eight years now (his head too sprung), goes the opposite direction and intimates that their conversation over this tepid ballad — and Paisley’s non-judgment over LL’s dookie rope chain — somehow makes up for American slavery. The idea that the country is “post-racial” was absurd from jump, but at the very least, let this song be the final nail in the coffin. All of this so Paisley could express his Skynyrd fandom, as well as his shock at the fact that maybe he can’t do whatever he wants when he wants to — and why noooooot? White male privilege is the damnedest thing. The duo’s other song together — Bruno Mars ripoff “Live for You” — isn’t going to spark nearly as many thinkpieces, and is little more than a waste of some Run-D.M.C. sample clearance. J.E.S.
2013: Florida Georgia Line ft. Nelly – “Cruise (Remix)”
Nasally duo Florida Georgia Line hit the top of the country charts with “Cruise,” a “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car” for folks who listen to Marshall Tucker Band and know what a “lift kit” is. The band has covered a truckload of rap songs in concert (“Tipsy,” “Wanna Be a Baller,” “Thrift Shop,” “In Da Club,” “Gold Digger,” “Young, Wild & Free”) and are avowed Nelly fans (they do “Hot in Herre,” too). Unfortunately, the country-fried Nelly of 2013 is far from the country-fried Nelly of 2004. The lyrics he donates to this remix are remarkably facile: Even Rick Ross would go to a Halloween party dressed as a cop before he rhymed “you” with “you” and “that” with “that.” The song was not an entirely unpredictable turn of events: With its chunky, greased-up acoustic guitar riff, “Cruise” shares more than a few strands of DNA with Nelly’s twangy dance thumper “Hey Porsche,” another song about living for cars and girls. J.S.
2013: Kevin Gates – “Careful”
Deep into the follow-up to Kevin Gates’ breakout mixtape The Luca Brasi Story comes “Careful,” a song where the New Orleans rapper switches to a country-fried whiteboy accent for the second verse—presumably Redneck Rick, the drawling character Gates often breaks out on his Instagram. C.W.
2013: Blake Shelton ft. Pistol Annies and Friends – “Boys ‘Round Here”
“Well, the boys round here, they’re keepin’ it country / Ain’t a damn one know how do the dougie,” sings Blake Shelton in matter-of-fact, chaw-and-dirt-road expression of Southern pride. However—quite brilliantly—much of “Boys ‘Round Here” ventures far from the ol’ swimming hole. Shelton uses a quasi-rapped flow and the music incorporates a turntable-like stutter. The music video—an example of something that tries so hard to be woke that it ends up a little bit racist—makes the similarities between hip-hop and country clear: Lowriders and monster trucks, linedancing and harlem shaking and a late night party where everyone’s invited. C.W.
2014: Buck 22 ft. Billy Ray Cyrus – “Achy Breaky 2”
Years before his “Old Town Road” cameo, Billy Ray Cyrus was out here signing off of wacky country-rap flukes. Buck 22 was the country-rap persona of music industry veteran Damon Elliott, whose production credits include songs by Destiny’s Child, Pink and Mya. With Billy Ray in tow, he cooked up a sequel to the monster 1992 hit complete with a trap beat (the EDM kind, not the rap kind), Miley shout-outs and a video that featured Larry King and twerking aliens. The song came around after Cyrus worked with Elliott’s mom, Dionne Warwick. “He had this track that I thought was unique and cool that wasn’t copping the exact record,” Cyrus told Rolling Stone. “I took it to my southern rock, bluegrass sound that I do and we just made our own sound.” C.W.
2014: Yelawolf – “Till It’s Gone”
Catfish Billy has never been shy about country signifiers, right down to his RED neck tattoo. However, he scored his highest charting solo hit on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart when he went total mosquito bite on 2014’s “Till It’s Gone.” The song is anchored by acoustic guitar courtesy of Mike Hartnett and premiered during an episode of Sons of Anarchy. “When I was writing to the beat, I was calling it the swampy beat,” Yela told Radio.com. “It’s got that dope, swampy, alligator, snake-infested, gangrene, dark beat that just made me feel that way.” C.W.
2014: Big Smo – Kuntry Livin’
Probably the biggest moment for Hick-Hop Wave 2, Tennessee’s Big Smo dropped his major label debut (featuring guest spots by Frankie Ballard and Darius Rucker) at the same time as an A&E reality show. The record features the raspy Smo navigating his world of backwoods, backroads, back porches, bogs, bucks, barehands and Biggie cadences (“Southern by blood, not re-la-tion”). C.W.
2014: Sam Hunt – Montevallo
At the 2015 CMAs, Brad Paisley joked that Sam Hunt “talks in his songs and then starts singing and the younger demographic just totally eats it up.” With one 10-track album released nearly a half-decade ago, Nashville’s Sam Hunt—an avowed fan of Drake, Usher and Ginuwine—exploded the genre constrictions of country radio. While Big and Rich giddily paraded their non-country influences like toppings for an outrageous Instagram milkshake, the cosmopolitan Hunt blended pop, rap, R&B, festival rock, retro folk and country like a modern reinvention of old-school A.M. radio. His motormouth raps ease into croon, twang accompanies drum loops, banjos duet with scratching. He hasn’t followed the album up as of this writing, but 2017 single “Body Like a Back Road” spent a 34 weeks atop the Hot Country Songs chart. C.W.
2015: Rick Perry’s campaign song
Hoo boy. Former Texas governor and future Trump staffer Rick Perry launched his doomed 2016 Presidential bid with a pickin’-and-rappin’ remake of Colt Ford’s 2012 song “Answer to No One.” However, Perry’s version featured some slick new lyrics for all those xenophobic rap fans out there: “Shotgun toter, Republican voter / Rick Perry supporter, let’s protect our border.” Perry dropped out of the race less than four months later. C.W.
2016: Post Malone – “Go Flex”
Espoused country fan Post Malone, born Austin Post, spent his formative years posting things like acoustic Dylan covers to YouTube. After he came to prominence behind the gossamer autotune fantasia “White Iverson” in 2015, he continued to pay homage to his tab-downloading roots by whipping out his guitar arbitrarily at live shows (here is footage of a “Lithium” cover from 2016). This questionable ethos helped light his way toward “Go Flex,” a follow-up single from his debut album Stoney which boasts an odd twinge of Americana, mostly thanks to its extroverted acoustic guitar track. Post puts his axe to the side for the verses, sidestepping back toward antiseptic trap crooner territory, but the folksy affect bursts in unceremoniously with the chorus. The power chords are incongruous, and the stomp-clap backbeat channels the Lumineers. It’s an odd bromide only someone as stylistically confused as Post Malone could devise.
The gutbucket affect recurs elsewhere on Stoney as well—the sludgy dirge “Leave,” with its tasteful central line of “this bitch is gonna drive me mad,” and Post’s misbegotten country drawl on acoustic closer “Feeling Whitney.” But it is “Go Flex” alone which finds the perfect, awkward medium between Austin Post’s dueling impulses to sound like Future or a hypothetical version of Everlast who reveres I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. Somehow, Post placed this Frankenstein’s monster on Hot 100, and everything went off the rails after that. By 2018, he’d be running down Merle Haggard tunes with Dwight Yoakam; this year, he covered Elvis with Keith Urban on national television and is set to headline the Cheyenne Frontier Days country music festival. In other words, Post Malone is a lucky young man who is handily able to both dominate the pop charts and lean into his most troubling musical incongruities, seemingly at will. WINSTON COOK-WILSON
2017: Young Thug ft. Millie Go Lightly – “Family Don’t Matter”
Though not exactly a hit when released as the lead track of Thugger’s country-folk-dancehall-ballad experiment Beautiful Thugger Girls, “Family Don’t Matter” is now widely regarded as the beginning of the “country trap” mini-movement that ultimately gave fellow Atlantan Lil Nas X a Number One hit. Calling himself “Country Billy,” adopting a twang and screaming “yeehaw,” the mumble-crunk pioneer still spits whimsical tales of the trap-rap trappings your wouldn’t want near your dusty barn: chains, white tees and Ferragamo flip-flops. C.W.
2017: Moonshine Bandits ft. David Allan Coe – “Take This Job” (Remix)
Outlaw provocateur David Allan Coe hasn’t exactly had the most, uh, enlightened views on race, infamously dropping some n-bombs on a handful of songs in the late Seventies and early Eighties. But he did write “Take This Job and Shove It,” the Johnny Paycheck class-war anthem transcendent enough to be covered by both Dead Kennedys and Biz Markie. Tattooed-and-mohawked Cali hick-hop duo Moonshine Bandits enlisted Coe, now in his late Seventies, to do a foreman-flipping rap remix. “I’ve been doing rappin’ for a long time,” Coe says in the intro. “I just didn’t know to call it rap. I been doin’ that shit my whole life.” C.W.
2018: Lil Tracy ft. Lil Uzi Vert – “Like a Farmer” (Remix)
“I don’t think I really had a point,” SoundCloud rapper Lil Tracy told Genius. “I was just trollin’. It was a joke.” A drunken night doing “country people impersonations” and freestyling some genre-appropriate metaphors (“I got horses in my car like a farmer” “He want beef, I’mma have to get him slaughtered”) resulted in a small country-trap moment, complete with a remix featuring Lil Uzi Vert. C.W.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HsOc5Qdla1Q
2018: Carrie Underwood ft. Ludacris – “The Champion”
This conversation between Carrie Underwood and Ludacris was commissioned for Super Bowl 52, joining the worlds of country and rap in celebrity power, though not sonics (the triumphant tune is more like a Fall Out Boy spin-class anthem). Said Underwood: “We started looking up great speeches, great sports speeches, great movies about sports. Those things that when you’re in the theater, you’re getting chill bumps when some coach is giving his team this amazing speech, and that’s what we wanted to put into a song.” C.W.
2019: Rappers adopt the “Yeehaw Agenda”
Coined by Texan Tweeter Bri Malandro to comment on a Western-themed Ciara photoshoot in 2018, the phrase “yee haw agenda” quickly galloped through the internet. Soon it became known as a catch-all for African-American performers wearing cowboy hats or boots, the fashion industry increasingly evoking the old West and a renewed interest in the rich history of black cowboys (and cowgirls), historical and contemporary. Of course, today’s rapperswere a big part of the conversation. Cardi B rocked chaps and a sparkly cowboy hat for a performance at the Houston Rodeo, Houston’s own Megan Thee Stallion sports a white cowboy hat for her “Make a Bag” video and Offset and Quavo wore cowboy hats for a Wonderland photoshoot. Malandro documents all manner of rootin’ tootin’ dopeness, past and present, on her Instagram account @theyeehawagenda. C.W.
2019: Lil Nas X – “Old Town Road”
The boot that kicked up a cloud of thinkpieces. Lil Nas X is a young internet enthusiast who crooned out an infectious piece of country trap that promptly became the new sheriff of TikTok. Billboard kneecapped it before it could chart on the country charts, the internet called racism and soon Twitter was exploding with conversations about race, genre, country radio and the relative coolness of Billy Ray Cyrus (who promptly saddled up for a remix). The viral song hit Number One on the Hot 100, the most country-rap moment in that spot since Will Smith took us to the “Wild Wild West” almost 20 years earlier. C.W.
