Country and rap are forming a closer bond than ever. Over the years, we’ve seen everyone from Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson to Morgan Wallen and Lil Durk team up. Here are the best rap and country collaborations of all time.
Back when hip-hop was seeping out of New York City and becoming the soundtrack of urban American, red states preferred the rootsy melodies of country music.
In those years, the idea of combining the two genres was generally only done as a joke. Even the Bellamy Brothers’ 1987 single “Country Rap” barely registered as a novelty hit, stalling at No. 31 on country radio and breaking the Florida group’s lengthy string of Top 10 hits.
Big & Rich, a genre-bending duo with a rapping sidekick named Cowboy Troy, opened country up to hip-hop’s influence a little more with their 2004 debut. But some of the songs that followed in their wake, like the 2005 Trace Adkins hit “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk,” still wore AAVE slang and hip-hop rhythms like an ill-fitting costume that was played for laughs.
That was a long time ago. Country and hip-hop fusions aren’t a joke anymore. It’s now a booming business. In the past few years, three songs have spent 15 or more weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, and they all mix country and hip-hop in one way or another: Lil Nas X’s remix of “Old Town Road” with Billy Ray Cyrus; Shaboozey’s twangy J-Kwon interpolation “A Bar Song (Tipsy);” and Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” which features trap drums courtesy of producer Charlie Handsome, who’s worked with rappers like Jack Harlow and Polo G.
