![]() I definitely called the president of the label and said, “We gotta put this out now.Brown kept working on his combination of hip-hop and country, which he likes to call “trailer trap,” while also songwriting and working as a vocal producer for Grammy-winning acts like Fergie and Monica. I did “The Git Up” in September of last year-and “Old Town Road” blew up in March. ![]() The album had been mixed and mastered over a year. I called the label president and said, “I don’t want to be looked at someone who put out his record after it started dying down. It boils down to, “this is his heart.” And that’s what makes it country-My heart makes it country.ĭid you and your label speed up the release of “The Git Up” after you heard “Old Town Road?” If you’re an enthusiast of country, you understand that a lap steel don’t make it country. When I heard Old Town Road, I said, “This is gonna go.” The second thought was, “He beat me to country twang with 808s-but our sound is nothing the same.” But I don’t know if the consumer knows that. Coles-I appreciate them because they’re rare. Then you got the positive rappers: the Chance the Rappers and the J. They’re talking about drugs, smoking, sex. The only type of music you don’t have to be heart-driven nowadays is rap music. We’re two different artists weighed together. When I heard “Old Town Road,” I looked up, and was looking for more records with that same feeling-to see what path it was on. What did you think of “Old Town Road” the first time you heard it? I feel like all genres should be more like that. They just want to make sure it’s not a joke. Because one thing I’ve learned about Nashville is, if they love what you have to offer and it’s authentic, they’re going to support it full-heartedly. I would never blame music on a race thing. ![]() Nobody was holding me back: It wasn’t the right timing. You see how long it’s taken me to put this sound out? We’re talking a long time.ĭid you feel like you were held back in the country world because of your race? But at the end of the day, I’m going to continue to create my sound.” I started doing traditional country in 2008. I was like, “I don’t know if I could agree with that. It didn’t take someone outside of my ethnicity to tell me, “Hey, country music is this or that.” It was my closest friends, telling me, “This ain’t gonna work for you.” I was saying, “Look at Darius Rucker.” They said, “Well, Darius Rucker tricked everybody. Was that something that was on your mind when you decided to start making country music? There haven’t been many African-American country stars. ![]() But if I delete those drums, you can’t take back the fact that it’s traditional country that lies at the surface. It ain’t what you preserved, it’s what you are-it’s the essence of your spirit. Snatching the butt of lightning bugs, making earrings. Country is walking barefoot, eating pickled pig feet, pig ears. I’m not trying to be country, I am country. They weren’t trying to identify as country-they were just being themselves. ![]() I guess you’d kind of say it was a sound developing in Atlanta from the Dungeon Family all the way up. Musically, do you think that combining country and rap is actually new, or is it an old phenomenon just now receiving mainstream attention? They actually built that bridge for me that I needed: that it’s one big world. Honeysuckles in the country, they bloomed just a little bit longer. Spending my summers in the country, then coming back to the projects in Atlanta, just bridged the gap. I could never get away from the storytelling. It changed my perspective and broadened my senses. The first song I heard and remember out there was Tim McGraw’s “Don’t Take the Girl.” When I heard it I was like, “Wow, this is a story-this is different from what I’m used to hearing.” Before that I was hearing Donny Hathaway, Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye-I never heard that approach to music. I remember my aunty making her own seasoning, picking peaches off the trees, eating boiled peanuts. I would go to Butler, Georgia, in the country, and spend my summers there with my great aunt and my mother. You knew they were hunting in the country. When I went to the country and I heard gunshots, no one ducked. ![]()
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