Country Trap Pop
tagStarted 2018Peak 2019-2021Last big hit 2021
Trap drum machines, rolling hi-hats and booming 808 bass sit under country imagery and twangy melody: banjo or slide-guitar samples ride a hip-hop beat while rapped verses hand off to a sung pop chorus. Viral and dance-driven, it splices honky-tonk and "trailer trap" production into shout-along hooks engineered for streaming.
History
Exploded in 2019 when Lil Nas X's banjo-sampling "Old Town Road" rode a trap beat to a record-tying 19 weeks atop the Hot 100, boosted by a Billy Ray Cyrus remix. Within weeks Blanco Brown's "The Git Up" sparked a viral dance craze under his self-styled "trailer trap." BRELAND's "My Truck" (2019) and major-name crossovers from Diplo and Keith Urban carried the lane into 2021.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Town_Road
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Truck
- https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/country/8527966/blanco-brown-the-git-up-interview-lil-nas-x/
- https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/diplo-morgan-wallen-new-song-heartless-thomas-wesley-872592/