Taken together, the rappers at Yelawolf's represented a group that was trying to do something new in a genre that, while hugely popular on a grassroots level, has received mostly scorn from critics.Hick-hop reignites the long, enduring debate about the place for white people in hip-hop but adds a complicated twist.
Making music based on a marketing gimmick can yield mixed results. While Knight calls himself a pioneer who brought rap to country bars, some of the lyrics in his song sound better suited for a T-shirt you'd buy at a beachfront shop in Daytona. On "We Don't Give a Truck," he raps, "You ain't gotta like how I wear my pants / You ain't gotta like my rebel flag / You ain't gotta like my tat / But you can kiss my country ass."Colt Ford couldn't be further from what we've come to expect from a contemporary rapper. He's a portly, white, self-described "redneck" from Athens, Georgia, with a horseshoe mustache and ruddy complexion who used to be a professional golfer.
Ford mocked the righteousness of the response to his brand of fusion with an irreverent track called "Hip-Hop in a Honky Tonk," where he rapped sarcastically that Hank Williams would be rolling over in his grave if he caught wind of rap invading the hallowed dive bars of Nashville. He teamed up with Shannon Houchins, a rap-industry veteran who'd formerly worked with Bubba Mathis, and together, they found a way to bypass the typical industry gatekeepers who criticized what they were doing and took country rap directly to fans.In 2011, Houchins got a call from a guy who owned a "mud park" called Pleasant View 4x4 in Nichols, South Carolina. Houchins grew up in rural Georgia in a house with a sand pit that he'd tear up with three-wheelers and ultimately the much safer four-wheeleer, but he had never heard of a mud park.The guy from Nichols was offering more money than Ford had ever been paid for a show. So they decided to go, and when they arrived, they found an empty field normally used to race ATVs and monster trucks through mud-filled ravines. Off in the distance was a makeshift stage, equipped with a PA system.As the day went on, the field filled up with revelers who had driven more than 100 miles for the concert. People tailgated out of pickups. Trucks ripped through trenches, slinging sludge at those fans who weren't already diving into mud puddles of their own volition. Big wheelers got lodged in mucky ditches, and onlookers guzzled mason jars of moonshine. At the time, Ford would normally sell around $800 worth of merchandise in a night, but there, in the middle of South Carolina, he pulled in more than $12,000. In the end, 4,700 people showed up to a show in a town with a population of fewer than 400.While symbols like the Confederate flag, cowboy hats, whiskey, and trucks are as common in country rap as they are in Yelawolf's music, the songs he writes tend to offer a more nuanced portrayal of what it's like to be poor and white in America.