Gangstagrass feature

by John M. Ellison IV

Whenever I read someone’s profile and the subject of music comes up about their favorite style of music, I notice a common phrase “I listen to anything unless it’s rap and/or country” or some variant of said phrase. Even within both circles of country and rap fans, you’ll notice the critique of rap by country fans and vice versa. If anything, I’ve realized that it was inevitable for both to be fused. I mean, if anything, rap and country and kind of one in the same. For example,

Both talk about life in their communities.

Both feel they’re looked down upon from being from a lower economic/working class environment.

Both styles tend to be storytelling based.

Sometimes both are just simple dance music.

What would you get when you fuse both styles of music? No, not “Crap” you get what’s known as Hick-Hop. For the record, Hick-Hop is nothing new. In fact you can trace the origins of fusing rap and country back to as far as country artists, The Bellamy Brothers “Country Rap.” But, there has been resurgence in country-influenced rap or in some cases rap-influenced country. Such as Kid Rock, Nappy Roots, Toby Keith, Big and Rich and Cowboy Troy.

But now we’re going to focus on the rap/country/bluegrass project, Gangstagrass. Gangstagrass started out as a mixtape project produced by Rench that featured old school Bluegrass and Country samples and rappers from the NY scene. Now all new Gangstagrass tracks are original material recorded with bluegrass players instead of relying on samples. In this feature, I’m going to cover both eras of Gangstagrass.

Put Your Hands up High feat T.O.N.E.Z.

Emmy nominated rapper T.O.N.E.Z. contributes tasteful and to the point MC’ing w/ a NY flow supplemented with a track that has traditional country flair to it.

Click Ol’ Gun

It’s odd, the missus and I were discussing the concept of a fusion of Funk and Bluegrass (in context, this was before I heard of the Bootsy Collins involved project The Bluegrass Boyz) and this is what I imagined that it would sound like.

On The Run

It’s very dark but clever wordplay. Actually, this has more of a blues flair to it as well as country…but on the other hand, a lot of people might not realize that Blues and Country weren’t exactly separate entities during the inception of both genres.

Pistol Packin

This starts with a sample of one of the most “gangsta” lines that I’ve heard in country, well pre-Johnny Cash that is. The lyric being, “You can hear my useful boasting/you can take my hardboiled hat/but you can never take from me my silver mounted gat…”

This is worth listening to if you’re open to branching out to something outside of your musical comfort zone.

http://www.myspace.com/gangstagrass

http://www.renchaudio.com/releases/lightning-on-the-strings-thunder-on-the-mic