On “Country Grammar,” Nelly takes the Bone Thugs approach to harmony and he sells it like he’s a chitlin-circuit soul singer in 1965. People had sung on rap beats before Nelly his fellow Midwesterners in Bone Thugs-N-Harmony had made a careful and intricate art of it. He namechecks Beenie Man and Onyx and Hannibal Lecter and Billy The Kid. Louis to Memphis, Texas back up to Indiana. He shouts out localities that weren’t on the mainstream-rap map - St.
He dizzily weaves through the track, veering shamelessly from one itchy and relentless cadence into the next. says on “Country Grammar” works as a hook. Practically everything the 25-year-old Cornell Hayes Jr. But the voice on the song was new - an exuberant holler, strained and melodic. Mike was the editor of The Junior Varsity.“Down Down Baby” worked as pop music in 1959, when the R&B group Little Anthony & The Imperials adapted it into the doo-wop hit “ Shimmy, Shimmy, Ko-Ko-Bop.” And “Down Down Baby” worked again as pop music in 2000, when it seemed to be banging out of the trunk of every third car.īefore “Country Grammar (Hot Shit),” there was absolutely nothing like “Country Grammar (Hot Shit).” Producer James “Jay E” Epperson’s computerized brass-band stutter-step and blinky synth noises were familiar from the New Orleans bounce that Cash Money Records was just then taking mainstream. Part 2: “Country Grammar” and the Rural-Southern Idyll
Country grammar video series#
Part 2 in a 5-part series on hometown anthems. If this is how Nappy Roots and I want to see our world (or ourselves), so be it. It’s also unclear how we’re supposed to feel about the commodification of this culture - I’m not from Kentucky, and I certainly don’t have vertical grills on my ride (I can’t drive), but does that make me unqualified to embrace this track as my own? At the end of the day, these are irrelevant concerns. It’s hard to parse what in this video is real, and what’s just a put-on for our benefit (the handwritten Juke Joint sign is particularly suspect). The song is about gravel roads, back porches, “cussin,” “kinfolk,” being “hogwild,” and country boys with their “big fat wheels” and “verti-cal grills ” the video has horses, barns, tire swings, overalls, tractors, barbecuing on a car engine, folks saying grace, and Marcos Curiel from P.O.D.
That’s because this song, written mostly by Kentucky natives, is one of the most unapologetically country anthems in hip-hop. So chances are, if you’ve ever rocked out to Nappy Roots’s excellent “Awnaw,” you were either paying tribute to the hayseed cousins you never really talk to, or you were performing in bumpkinface. Statistically speaking, most of us grew up in urban and suburban places. Watch the very good (but unembeddable) rock version on YouTube. Perhaps one of the most comprehensive videos of this type is Field Mob’s “Georgia,” featuring Ludacris and (Texas-born) Jamie Foxx: Part of what makes Atlanta so interesting as a music scene is how self-conscious it is: not only is there an instantly-recognizable Atlanta “sound” (smooth, masterful, often baroque production - think of anything by The-Dream), but songs and videos about being from Atlanta are in no short supply, either, from “ Oh” ( Ciara‘s own “Jenny from the Block”) to “ Growing Pains” (DTP’s “Hard Knock Life”). How else could we describe the birthplace of OutKast and Janelle Monáe, both of whom literally act like they’re from outer space? Though it has produced some of the greatest figures in American music, ATL still positions itself as the ultimate outsider - a scruffy, stylish, homegrown music capitol with the soaring ambitions of Nashville mixed with the rigorous, deliberate weirdness of Portland or Austin. This is one of the primary aims of a hometown anthem: fostering a sense of belonging, togetherness, and pride through shared images and experiences, if only for the duration of a pop song. These flashes and fragments of a culture form a tapestry of how this city lives on a day-to-day basis - and when you’re from there, you can use these recognizable bits and pieces as emotional points-of-entry, engaging your history, your sentimental associations, and the many things you have in common with your neighbors (whether you realize it or not).
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