The Dirty, Dirty South

Abstract Country rap is not simply a blending of rap and country genres. Rather, it is a distinct genre formation shaped by mutually enforcing and contested notions of space (the rural and the urban), race (Blackness and whiteness), and value (the authentic and the inauthentic). Within the highly racialized discourses that hold country music and hip-hop in opposition, country rap is frequently heard as an unwelcome outlier, with country fans dismissing the music as hip-hop and hip-hop fans dismissing the music as country. This chapter asks what politics can be gleaned from rigorous consideration of country rap through an exploration of mud and outlaws in the genre’s media. For instance, what legitimate issues with the law necessitate the use of the outlaw figure? How does mud enable and catalyze claims to land and territory? What can be made of the pervasiveness of confederate battle flags that are in many of the music videos—regardless of the race of the performer? Ultimately, the chapter makes a case for country rap’s centrality in understanding the politics of race and place in the United States.