aka "hip hop for people who are afraid of black people', shoutout to Steve Earl for saying that.

Anway, this video has me looking at the camera. I've known country was crossing over into rap for some years now, but this is petty fucking blatant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT9iox7jH1g

my age group was racist parents & white skin....

Turn the lights out, crank some music & provide weed & alcohol and for the most part everyone had a good time.



"Get ready....for your blessing....."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnpZRfre7Ns

than a redneck who just lifted his pickup.

for Trump and are on some bullshit lol..



"Get ready....for your blessing....."

And have become an unlikely pop powerhouse due to their willingness to be promiscuous with their sound (and their team writes great hooks, and former youth pastor-turned downhome hedonism evangelist Tyler Hubbard has a great voice and affect.)

I first became aware of them a few years back when I heard this jam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1oL37ycONQ

There is a certain amount of country authenticity-signalling going on where the funkier a beat is, it must be balanced by proportional amounts of slide guitar/banjo etc. Despite the crassness of it, you have to sort of admire the competency and commitment to the strategy.

Whatever you think about their music (along with that of fellow traveler in these waters Luke Bryan), they do a lot of nodding of the hat to ideas like diversity (see "People are Different", or the so-abundant-they-are-cliche-at-this-point lyrical references to musical touchstones that must always include both country and hiphop classics--so the mixtape has to contain "a little Conway and a little T-Pain", on the jukebox one plays "the Travis Tritt right above the Tupac", etc.). A lot of their fans may be Trumpers but you hear a subtle reproach to those politics in a lot of their music.

its a damned african instrument

Although I suppose it's not just the banjo's presence that is used for this signalling, but certain musical forms associated with Country (which I'm not sophisticated enough musically to know the origin of, tho it must trace back to blues in some fashion I'd wager).

I've been listening to a bit of early Country music lately and I find myself wondering how that music developed. Blues was obviously an influence, but I'd love to learn more about how exactly the artform developed especially given the racial dynamics at play and the fact that recording was in its infancy.

Right down to the same criticisms/defenses of the music everyone was doing with hip hop in the 90's. Bro country is more or less doing to country what Limp Bizkit and those guys did to hard rock in the late 90's. It's grafting the aesthetics of hip hop onto their genre.