Steve Ray Ladson - Back Of My Truck (Kuntryboy Music Group)

“Back Of My Truck” may seem like a surprising track, but perhaps the most surprising thing about it is that such a collision of sonic worlds hasn’t happened before. Perhaps it has, maybe I’m late to the roots-hop party, but I bet it was never done this deftly or this deliciously.

If you think the rural sounds of bluegrass and country music are worlds apart from the more urban hip-hop and electric blues styles of the city scene, then Steve Ray Ladson is here to put you straight. Not only does “Back Of My Truck” feel like the most country of song titles, but appropriately, it is filled with lilting banjos, sweeping fiddles, drifting lap steel guitar, and blues riffs.

But it is when you find yourself bopping and boogying along to the stomping groove that it reveals its smartest trick, as you soon find that the beats that provide that energetic flow come more from the trap and hip-hop scene. As these supposedly opposing styles and sounds coil and curl, meld and merge, dance and fuse around each other, it will probably dawn on you – although it is something we have always known – opposites really do attract, and the coming together of these opposites makes for the most attractive music you will have heard in a long time.

There is a growing wave in American music in recent times, something that only the post-genre world is able to usher forth for the masses, something that can best be described as pop-trap-country. Along with artists such as Willie Jones and Shaboozey, Steve Ray Ladson is surfing that wave right through the musical mainstream, up the charts, and into the public’s collective heart.

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