♪ Girl I gotta get me ♪
♪ Gotta get me some of that ♪
♪ Pursuit of happiness ♪
And it's not just the girls and the cars.
♪ Live it up now ♪
♪ Speak my piece ♪
♪ Keep my peace ♪
For example, you might recognize
this type of low-angle shot
because it's been a signature of rap videos
since the '90s.
♪ I'm slim shady ♪
♪ Yes, I'm the real shady ♪
And dance moves like this?
Straight out of hip-hop choreography.
As for the music itself,
well, country's sounding a lot like hip-hop too.
You've got trap beats.
808 kick drums.
♪ So won't you ride with me ♪
♪ Ride with me ♪
Rap-like rhythms.
♪ Whatcha know about picking off a blackberry ♪
Even beatboxing.
So, why is Nashville borrowing so heavily
from hip-hop these days?
It turns out the two genres share a long history,
and in today's music landscape,
country artists have strategic reasons
to embrace hip-hop sounds and aesthetics.
♪ Yeah, I'm gonna take my horse to the Old Town Road ♪
♪ I'm gonna ride till I can't no more ♪
Country's drift toward hip-hop
started in the late 2000s
with the wave of so-called "country rappers."
Just listen to the rapid-fire delivery of Colt Ford,
Jason Aldean,
and Blake Shelton.
See how they all spit their lines
like they're rapping?
This first generation of new country acts
paved the way for another crop of singers
with hip-hop-inspired cadences.
♪ Makeup on your face ♪
♪ Try to hide the pain ♪
♪ All the lies, they look like the truth ♪
One of them, Sam Hunt,
has even been dubbed "the country Drake"
for his slick, streamlined R&B production
and his conversational flow.
♪ I'd act like I didn't see her ♪
♪ But we'd pay at the same pumps ♪
♪ Flip through the same stations ♪
♪ Slow down for the same curves ♪
♪ Run around with the same crowds. ♪
Notice how when Hunt switches from singing to speaking,
he'll often deliver bursts of syllables on offbeats.
There, he's using a technique called syncopation,
which is a major part of rap flow.
Almost all skilled MCs use syncopation
to create complex rhythmic patterns that defy expectation.
Hunt is taking that skill
and applying it to a country power ballad.
And Sam Hunt is hardly an isolated case.
Pandora did a large-scale analysis
of every song on their platform
to see how much has changed since 2010.
They found that hip-hop's presence in country
has exploded over the past eight years.
You'll hear the difference
if you listen to the Country Top 100
and pay attention to the instruments in the songs.
♪ But it ain't her fault, nah ♪
♪ Look what God gave her ♪
♪ What you feel is natural ♪
♪ But I don't want to feel this anymore ♪
Mainstream country is relying less and less
on the genre's traditional string instruments
in favor of beat machines like the 808
and other synthetic elements
long used in hip-hop production.
Kevin Holt: The shift toward digital instruments
in general, you know, is always gonna have
a bit of a hip-hop connotation.
That's Kevin Holt,
an ethnomusicologist at Columbia University
who's studied the relationship
between music and Southern hip-hop.
Holt: Hip-hop is one of the first
mainstream music movements
that really focused on prerecorded music
and digital manipulation in process.
Narrator: So, just how far has country strayed
from its homegrown, bluegrass roots?
Well, take one of the most controversial
digital-processing tools, Auto-Tune.
♪ I'm T-Pain ♪
♪ You know me ♪
Hip-hop has had a long love affair with the software,
with innovators like T-Pain and Kanye West
embracing it as an over-the-top artistic choice.
The hyper-artificial sound they adopted
seems directly contrary to country music,
with its emphasis on raw, organic acoustics.
And yet...
♪ Pulling up now and the parking lot's full ♪
♪ Everybody in the ATL is coming ♪
♪ I got my windows down ♪
♪ And the radio up ♪
♪ Get your radio up ♪
♪ Looking for that girl ♪
♪ That girl, that girl ♪
Country's also warmed up to the sound
of the synthesizer.
Like Auto-Tune, synth has had a major presence
in hip-hop since the early '90s,
when pioneering producers like Dr. Dre
used it to make that whistle sound...
now associated with West Coast G-funk.
You would rarely hear much synth in mainstream country
until about five years ago,
when country's songs started getting synthier...
and synthier.
A trend that's backed up by actual data.
But hip-hop's most pervasive mark on country
is in these clap or snap tracks,
drum-machine loops that use canned finger snaps
or hand claps to emphasize the even beats of the song.
That's the second and fourth beats of each measure.
♪ I don't know about you ♪
♪ But I never come into this spot ♪
♪ On a Thursday before 10 o'clock ♪
These are the backbeats you're used to hearing
in hip-hop and R&B.
♪ You can't do it like me ♪
♪ I'm by myself ♪
♪ I do it so good ♪
♪ I don't need nobody else ♪
Holt: That was absolutely the central beat
of the hip-hop subgenre snap.
So, like, D4L or some late Ying Yang Twins.
Narrator: It's clear that Nashville artists
are replicating hip-hop methods of storytelling,
and that applies to their look as well as their sound.
For example, these ultrawide ratio shots,
a technique that first appeared
in the videos of the Beastie Boys
and then was pioneered in the '90s
by legendary hip-hop director Hype Williams.
Using this type of close-focus, wide-angle lens
creates a fish-eye effect that distorts the camera view
around its central focus, the performer,
whether it's a rap or country star.
Low-angle shots are another key part
of the rap-video aesthetic
that you'll now see all over mainstream country videos.
Shooting your subject from below
makes them appear larger than life
and puts them in a position of power,
where they're looking down on you in the audience.
Hype Williams, in a 2002 interview with the LA Times, said,
Hype William's videos created an exaggerated spectacle
around the performer,
so they served as great artist promotion,
helping turn a whole generation of rappers
into bona fide video stars.
It makes sense, then, that country artists
would take a few cues from the rap videos
that took over MTV in the '90s and early 2000s.
And in today's music arena, country artists
have even more incentive to look to hip-hop
for inspiration.
The simple reason? Hip-hop is everywhere.
It surpassed rock as most popular genre in the US,
accounting for a whopping quarter
of all songs streamed in 2018.
And Spotify says it's now their
most listened-to genre in the world.
Holt: One thing about hip-hop is
digital distribution was sort of in its bones.
You know? So when, sort of, the internet took off,
you know, hip-hop was right there,
like, already ready to go.
Narrator: Country, on the other hand,
has struggled in the digital-streaming era.
Its audience skews older and has been slow
to switch from radio and CD sales
over to streaming services.
It doesn't benefit from the very online fan base
that hip-hop enjoys.
And the more purist forms of country music
can have limited appeal among younger listeners.
Country artists looking to cater
to a more open-eared audience
might blend hip-hop flourishes into their music
in the hopes of making it more stream-friendly.
Holt: The idea of who your audience might be
has completely blown up.
Maybe my country experience
is more baseball cap than cowboy hat.
People are creating their own, like, radio experiences,
and so at any moment somebody might jump from
alternative to hip-hop to heavy metal.
So there's this question of
how do I create music that speaks
not just to, you know, my locality?
Narrator: As we saw in 2019, one potent strategy
for catapulting country songs into the mainstream
is through memes and viral dances
taking over platforms like TikTok.
♪ It's time to shine ♪
♪ Gonna do the two-step ♪
♪ And the cowboy boogie ♪
♪ Grab your sweetheart ♪
♪ And spin out with 'em ♪
♪ Do the hoedown ♪
♪ And get into it ♪
In April 2019, country newcomer
Blanco Brown released a series of videos
aimed at creating a dance challenge
around his single "The Git Up."
He was using the same tactic
that's propelled so many rap songs to the top of the chart.
♪ Black beatles in the city ♪
♪ Be back immediately ♪
♪ To confiscate the money ♪
♪ Kiki, do you love me ♪
♪ Are you riding ♪
♪ Say you'll never, ever leave from beside me ♪
And it worked.
Meanwhile, Sam Hunt first got his name out there
by dropping a free mixtape,
a move that's pretty unheard of in country.
He got the idea from watching the career beginnings
of rappers and R&B artists like The Weeknd.
Other country singers have started using audio snippets
to tease upcoming releases,
which has long been one of rappers' favorite ways
to build hype around their new music.
♪ Press, press, press, press, press ♪
♪ Cardi don't need no press ♪
For country artists looking to introduce their music
to younger and wider demographics,
there's another approach that's potentially
even more lucrative:
partnering with hip-hop artists on tracks and even on tour.
Tim McGraw showed the power
of the cross-genre collab back in 2004
when he teamed up with Nelly on the single "Over and Over."
♪ It's all in my head ♪
♪ I think about it over and over again ♪
Their duet topped charts around the globe,
thanks largely to crossover airplay.
The Nashville duo Florida Georgia Line
followed suit in 2013,
tapping Nelly for a rework of their song "Cruise."
♪ I got my windows down ♪
♪ And the radio up ♪
♪ Get your radio up ♪
♪ What up, Nelly ♪ ♪ All right ♪
The original single had climbed
to No. 16 on the charts
but then dropped off the Hot 100,
until the new version with Nelly
was unveiled a few months later.
With the rapper on board, the "Cruise" remix
surged all the way up to the top five on the charts,
where it proved its long-term staying power.
These country-rap connections
may have seemed far-fetched to some listeners at the time,
but the boundaries between country and hip-hop
were never that cut and dry to begin with.
♪ And without hope ♪
While country is typically associated
with white artists and audiences,
the genre actually grew out of the black folk music
of the American South.
It all starts with this instrument right here.
♪ Hear that banjo ♪
The banjo.
One of the defining instruments of country music
actually originates in West Africa
and came to America through the slave trade.
That all changed at the dawn
of the commercial recording industry,
when record labels decided to start segregating their music
into racialized genres.
Holt: When genres were first created
in the American popular-music world in the 1920s,
you know, there were just three genres.
You had hillbilly music, race music, mainstream.
As time went on, hillbilly music became,
it was referred to as "country and Western."
Race music became rhythm and blues, R&B,
and mainstream became pop.
What defined those genres
wasn't so much what they sounded like;
it was who was making the music.
And so for race music,
it was the music by and for African Americans.
For hillbilly music, it was music by and for
poor, working-class white people,
and mainstream was for
middle-class, wealthy white people.
One thing that country and hip-hop certainly share
is telling the stories of poor and working-class people.
Be they urban or rural,
part of understanding the genres as authentic
has been tied to grounding them
in the worlds that they came out of
and sort of, in a way, paying homage to those spaces.
Narrator: That's why an artist's roots matter so much
in both country and hip-hop.
Storytelling and lived experience
are part of what gives a performer their authenticity,
what's known in hip-hop as "realness."
♪ I'm the realest after all ♪
♪ Tell 'em be humble ♪
And in country as, well, "countryness."
♪ What makes you country ♪
♪ 'Cause if you know me ♪
♪ I was raised on country ♪
♪ Brother, she's all ♪
♪ Country ♪
So the classification of music into genres
was never just about the way the music sounded,
but rather the race and class of its intended audience.
Although the segregation of the record industry
took place way back in the '20s,
you can still see its legacy at award shows.
Drake: Even though "Hotline Bling" is not a rap song,
the only category that they can manage to fit me in
is in a rap category.
Narrator: Yet, a segregated industry
has never stopped different genres
from sharing common musical DNA.
The birth of hip-hop, in the '80s,
arose from a variety of black musical traditions,
some of which, like blues and rock 'n' roll,
have also shaped the evolution of country.
Holt: These musicians, these artists have been
kind of influencing each other all along,
but it's happening in a very pronounced way.
Narrator: We've seen that hip-hop has shaped
the direction of modern country music,
both sonically and visually.
But what about the other way around?
♪ The Wild, Wild West ♪
Holt: There has definitely always been
a bit of a country voice in hip-hop,
even if it's not so pronounced.
Narrator: Country's had the most marked influence
on Southern hip-hop,
the music that's come out of places like
Atlanta, New Orleans, and Memphis, Tennessee.
Holt: The 1990s into the early 2000s,
there were music makers and audiences
who felt that the hip-hop that existed
didn't really make space for them,
because they were Southern.
There was this need to sort of brand themselves
as authentically Southern and authentically hip-hop
and distinct from the East Coast and the West Coast.
Country music and images became fertile ground
for asserting the hip-hop aesthetic
that wasn't just a replication of the urban landscape.
Groups like OutKast,
who, in "Rosa Parks," there is a harmonica solo,
there is hamboning
and clapping with stomping.
Having that type of moment,
that very bluegrassy, country moment,
at the climax of this hip-hop song
was a assertion of saying, well, you know, we're hip-hop,
but we're not just defined by this urban centrality.
Narrator: Atlanta, the city that birthed OutKast,
is arguably the epicenter of hip-hop today.
Home to pioneering artists like Young Thug,
who's freely experimented with
country-trap melodies in his music.
♪ Country Billy made a couple milli ♪
♪ Tryna park the Rolls-Royce inside the Piccadilly ♪
Now, when the South is widely credited
as the center of innovation and hip-hop,
it's easy to forget that during the '90s,
groups like OutKast
faced backlash from hip-hop's gatekeepers,
who didn't like their distinctly country sound.
André 3000: It's like, we got a demo tape,
but don't nobody wanna hear it,
but it's like this: The South got something to say.
That's all I got to say.
Narrator: That knee-jerk reaction was echoed
in the recent controversy over Lil Nas X
and his genre-defying hit "Old Town Road."
Holt: I'm sure for some, when that beat dropped...
♪ I got the horses in the back ♪
♪ Horse stock is attached ♪
It suddenly didn't represent the type of space
that people imagine country music should be in.
Hip-hop being so centered on poor, working-class urban
and country being so focused on poor, working-class rural,
those differences can seem like this huge barrier,
and now it's a barrier
that's much more permeable than before.
Narrator: So why does this genre mingling
always seem to create so much controversy?
Some fans worry that genre distinctions
will eventually erode completely
and all forms of music will blend together
into a bland, undefined mono-genre.
Holt: And that's, I think, one of the fears that sort of
underlies that position,
is that when genres start to hybridize,
is that they lose their potency
and meet somewhere in the middle
and there's no discernible flavor to either.
But, as we know, you add two flavors,
you might get a unique flavor, you know?
It doesn't necessarily have to turn into nothing.