The term “country rap” has started to take its run in mainstream country formats. With the recent success of country artist Colt Ford and The Lacs , along with current “rap style” hits by country mega stars Jason Aldean (“Dirt Road Anthem”), Toby Keith (“Red Solo Cup”) and Tim McGraw (“Truck Yeah”), one would think that this is a new concept. But if you are a true music historian, you would recall that this movement actual began in 2001 with the release of Bubba Sparxxx’s debut album Dark Days, Bright Nights. The video for the first single, “Ugly,” featured Bubba and pals in the mud with pigs, on tractors and performing in front of a house covered with bug lights. If that’s not the epitome of country, then nothing is.

Fast forward eleven years, and you find Bubba re-uniting with his original collaborator Shannon “Fat Shan” Houchins, whom, over the years, has built the successful record label Average Joes Entertainment on the foundation of blending musical genres. “Bubba and I grew up listening to hip-hop and riding in jacked up trucks,” Houchins says. “I was producing mainstream rap and R&B records when Bubs first came to me and said ‘why don’t we combine the music we like with lyrics about the lifestyle we live’.” This wake up call led to the creation of the movement.

The platinum certified Dark Days, Bright Nights debuted on Interscope Records in October 2001 and was produced by Houchins and superstar producers Timbaland and Organized Noize. It was followed-up by the critically acclaimed 2003 release, Deliverance.

“I remember thinking, as a 12 or 13 year old kid, that the spirit of hip-hop music wasn’t a whole lot different than the spirit of the “outlaw” country music I had grown up hearing around my pops and uncles.” Bubba recalls. “The rebellious nature of say NWA, or 2 Live Crew, or The Geto Boys, in the late 80s, early 90s just wasn’t that different from the movement that guys like Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Billy Joe Shaver and others created by simply being themselves and saying what they wanted.“

At that time, Bubba’s surroundings were changing in the rural area where he grew up in LaGrange, Georgia. Various drug epidemics had penetrated his small neck of the woods, and the “reality” of life in the country had begun to shift. Folks were still hard working, and had traditional values, but drugs and violence had become more prevalent, as a new generation of boys and girls became man and women in this hostile environment. In many ways, the lower class, started to identify as much with rap music, as country music. This coincided with hip-hop, and rap exploding on popular culture, and the merging of the two genres. In terms of people riding around listening to both genres, this musical adventure was developing organically long before a “country rap” song was ever recorded.