There was no precedent for the Wu-Tang Clan insurgency in the early and mid-1990s, and, if we’re being honest, there’s been nothing quite like it since.
Perhaps more than any other figure, producer and executive Shannon Houchins has had the most significant impact on the development of country-rap. He produced the first Bubba Sparxxx album, and his label Average Joes Entertainment — a partnership with country-rapper Colt Ford — has promoted several other artists who blend the two genres, including the Lacs, Lenny Cooper and Sarah Ross.
Over the last few weeks, “Old Town Road” — a strutting and lightheartedly comedic country-rap tune by the previously unknown 20-year-old rapper Lil Nas X — has lived an improbable number of lives.
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — For Blueface, everything is still new, and a little surprising. A couple of weeks ago, he was paid $20,000 to perform two songs at the opening of a boutique. When he asks women in the crowd at concerts to lift up their shirts, they oblige. Recently, seated in first class on a flight, he ran his phone camera over the sea of other people in cushioned seats, smiled and implored his viewers to “say hello to all my Caucasian friends.”
ALPHARETTA, Ga. — At the beginning of the year, 21 Savage was at his commercial apex. His second album, “I Am > I Was,” spent two weeks atop the Billboard album chart. “Rockstar,” his collaboration with Post Malone, was nominated for two Grammys, and he was set to perform at the ceremony.
No current pop star is more adept at stoking and channeling swells of online fan curiosity than Ariana Grande. In the past year, she navigated a tumultuous relationship with comedian Pete Davidson; the death of an ex-boyfriend, rapper Mac Miller; a public row with the Grammys; and more. In the process, she has become a master of the Easter egg, the clapback, the strategic tweet-and-delete. In the middle of a storm, Grande is cool and collected, hands firmly on the wheel.
James Ingram, whose voice — technically precise, crisp and reserved, yet full of audacious feeling — made him one of the defining singers of R&B; in the 1980s, has died. He was 66.
CHELMSFORD, England — On a farm 15 minutes north of downtown Chelmsford, a smallish Essex commuter city 30 minutes by train from London, Jordan Cardy has begun turning his 1990s dreams into reality.
“La Romana,” one of the standout songs from Bad Bunny’s invigorating debut album, “X 100PRE,” begins with bachata guitar — nimble, quick, leaning toward the traditional. Before long, it’s bolstered by a booming, viscous Latin trap beat, and the 24-year-old Puerto Rican rapper begins his trademark exultations.
What pop means changes depending on what angle you’re looking from. It can be a descriptor of audience size, indicating something that’s popular, or it can be a genre tag, specifying a sound. But for much of the past three decades, these two definitions have effectively been one and the same.
Reviewing the work of XXXTentacion during his lifetime required both acknowledging music that was wildly influential, extremely popular and often impressive while also underscoring that it was by an individual accused of heinous abuse. They could not be disentangled.
JACKSON, Ky. — Earlier this month, Sturgill Simpson headed eastward from Lexington until he hit Highway 15, which he drove until it dead-ended into Highway 30. This was the way into Jackson, the sparse, hilly town of around 2,000 people he grew up in. Just before the intersection, a small sign announced that he was in the right place: “Hometown of Grammy Award Winning Artist Sturgill Simpson.”
