And now for something completely different: Who's up for some hick hop?

Many of you will have realized my penchant for country rock and Americana, but fewer if any will have realized that I have a love for hip hop music, mainly because One Buck Records hasn't featured any hip hop yet. But that'll change. I might be wrong, but I guess a lot of One Buck Records readers are fine with having little to none hip hop in their lives (prove me wrong, people!). But to get a leg into the genre we'll start with hip hop that only has one leg in the genre - and the other firmly planted on a country road.

Country rap, or as I prefer it being called, hick hop has been a genre for about twenty years now. Some would point to Kid Rock and "Cowboy" but other than singing about Rock's wish to be that, it doesn't have particularly firm roots in the genre, though Kid would soon afterwards unironically embrace country music after trying to be Bob Seger for a couple of years. I'm not counting the ever popular duet option of either a country singer with a guest rapper or vice versa. Do it entirely, or don't do it at all. 

So, the first real hick hop artist that really broke through was Bubba Sparxxx. I'm not a huge fan of his debut album (including the hit "Ugly"), but lead single "Deliverance" from the follow-up of the same name is a fantastic piece of business. Timbaland's beats were state of the art then and are still beautiful twenty years later. It's just a beautifully constructed track. Sparxxx himself ain't no slouch himself, coming up with some rhymes that always make me smile: "You took your wealth and knowledge and gave it to the poor / only to find that your savior's manure". And the chorus casts him as a modern day Huckleberry Finn: "I've been travellin' for some time / with my fishing pole and my bottle of shine". Hick Hoppers The Lacs followed in his foot steps a couple of years later, channeling a certain John Denver classic here in "Country Road". 

Sparxxx' work might have been the spark that lit a dozen country rap artists, but Brooklyn producer Rench pushed things further with his Gangstagrass project, which mixed rap and bluegrass to often astounding effect. Half of the album of the day are Gangstagrass cuts, you will probably at least familiar with "Long Hard Times To Come", used as the theme music for the great Justified. 

And then there's of course the third option, country or Americana acts covering rap songs, with two prime examples on this album: Thai-American Hugo's bluegrass version of Jay-Z's "99 Problems" and one of my first exposure's to the sub-genre, The Gourds' hilarious take on Snoop Dogg's "Gin And Juice", complete with the most redneck-y vocals you can imagine. Fun stuff.  

So, ready for some Hick Hop y'all?! Then let's get the hip hop hoedown started...