Hick Hop

Rappers Trying to Legitimize Hick-Hop

By Zach Goldbaum

October 12, 2016 

Yelawolf, whose new album, Trial by Fire, is due out this fall,.. He's a skinny white rapper with an affinity for denim, wide-brimmed hats, and tattoos, one of which is inked across his hairline and reads slumerican, a word he coined as a way of trying to reclaim terms like "white trash." He didn't want to be associated with any "redneck rap" because Yelawolf, whose real name is Michael Wayne Atha, has been trying to distance himself from the fringe artists in the maligned country-rap genre.
Country rap doesn't get much radio play, and few of its artists are household names, but it's managed to amass an enormous underground following. Since the genre began to crystalize in the early 2000s, country rappers have sold millions of records, regularly drawn thousands of fans to outdoor concerts in small towns, and lined CD shelves at rural Walmarts.

Often mockingly referred to as "hick-hop," country rap is a hybrid of its two namesakes, genres that at first blush are polar opposites. Country audiences are older, buy more physical music, still listen to traditional radio, and are typically from rural communities. Hip-hop fans skew younger and get their music online, streaming or downloading millions of albums a day from sites like Spotify and Datpiff. Ask fans the simple question, "What music do you listen to?," and depending on what part of the US you're in, you're likely to hear "anything but rap" or "anything but country."

But country and rap have more in common than most realize. After recording a collaboration with country artist Tim McGraw called "Over and Over," St. Louis rapper Nelly explained why the marriage could succeed: "Hip-hop and country... they come out of poverty-stricken communities, so putting those together, it's gonna work—it just has to be done right." That's the major problem: It's so rarely done right. Look no further than the half-song, half-viral joke "Accidental Racist," a Brad Paisley duet with LL Cool J, who raps a cringe-inducing verse about his willingness to forget the chains of slavery if white people can forgive him for liking gold chains.

With examples like this in mind, people regularly write off hick-hop as a lowbrow gimmick that conflates two genres that shouldn't share studio time. 

Yelawolf is not a country rapper but instead a hip-hop artist who stands out in a crowded field by infusing his music with southern rock and stories about rural America. It's not for everyone—imagine Eminem with an Alabama drawl and a taste for metal and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and you'll have a pretty good idea of his sound.
   
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 Zach Goldbaum is the host of Noisey, a TV show that takes its audience around the world to meet artists and people in the most compelling, and sometimes controversial, music scenes. It returns to VICELAND this January.
This article appeared in the October issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Topics: VICE magazine, v23n7, Music Issue, October, Yelawolf, hick-hop, Struggle, America, Americana, American South, the South, hip-hop, white America, rap

Source: http://www.vice.com/read/i-met-the-rappers-trying-to-legitimize-hick-hop-and-one-of-them-licked-me-v23n07