Hip-Hop music has
been meshed with almost every musical genre. Country music star Tim McGraw is
breaking ground and incorporating the art form into his live stage show.
McGraw’s
2004 tour is being hailed as a milestone event due to the inclusion of an African-American
rapper named Cowboy Troy, who rhymes during McGraw’s set.
Troy, who is 6’5
and 260 pounds, performs with McGraw on the song “She’s My Kind
of Rain” complete in cowboy hat, boots jeans and a large belt buckle.
“CTB”
is no stranger to rapping. He started his career in 1989 and honed his rhyming
skills in bars around the Dallas, Texas area before heading for the bright lights
of Country music capital, Nashville, Tennessee.
He has released
three independent albums, Hick-Hop Hysteria (2001), Beginner’s
Luck (2002) and Vintage (2003).
“One day
in the future, people might point to the current Tim McGraw tour as the start
of something big,” music critic Jim Harrington wrote. “I’m not talking
about McGraw’s career. That’s already plenty big enough. I mean the mainstreaming
of a new musical trend: hip-hop country. In five years, if not sooner, when
rap mingles as easily with country as it now does with rock, scholars will see
McGraw’s 2004 tour as a milestone event.”
And despite purists’
objections to the mixing of the two art forms, the crowd that attended McGraw’s
show at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California embraced the
concept.
“I’m a country
girl and my husband is more rap and rock,” Brianne Critchley told the
Alameda Times Star. “But I really liked it.”
