Sabyn, Dolly Parton’s nephew, was raised on Houston hip-hop
Sabyn, a filmmaker and rapper, is the son of singer-songwriter Randy Parton and the nephew of Dolly Parton. His mother is Laray Mayfield, an Emmy-winning casting director whose credits include the Amazon film “Antebellum” and “Gone Girl.” Sabyn himself directed and co-wrote the film “Boomtown,” starring Rachel Brosnahan and Dwight Yoakam.
Even more interesting? Sabyn cites Houston’s rap scene as one of his biggest musical influences, specifically the golden era of Swishahouse.
“Paul Wall, Mike Jones, Slim Thug, Michael Watts, Dr.
Teeth,” says Sabyn, 40, who lives in Hendersonville, just outside Nashville. “It was like they were shot out of a cannon. Did you just slow this down and repeat it 27 times? That’s incredible. That slowed-down, swag delivery just hit home with me.”
He calls “Still Tippin,’ ” the song that defined the Houston sound, one of his favorites and “one of the greatest hip-hop videos of all time.”
Sabyn was previously part of a country/hip-hop duo, and his music was featured on the CMT reality series “Party Down South.” But his career to this point has been as a filmmaker. He has directed several shorts and music videos and worked in casting on the films “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “Spring Breakers.” The aforementioned “Boomtown,” released in 2017, is his biggest project to date.
“My childhood dream, my itty-bitty Sabyn dream, has always been music. It took me a long time to have the confidence and to find my voice,” he says.
Sabyn was spurred to return to music after meeting his father for the first time in December 2019. The pair knew of each other but had “never gotten any traction for a variety of reasons that don’t really matter now,” he says. They quickly made up for lost time.
“It was definitely a painful, confusing journey. But as two men, sitting across from each other, two fathers, there was a lot understood that didn’t need to be explained,” Sabyn says.
To deepen their connection,
Sabyn took an old recording of his father singing “Tennessee Born” and had a friend sample and remix it. Sabyn wrote and recorded new lyrics over the beat, originally intending it as a gift for his father.
“I wanted to have a piece of music that captured his talent and the beauty of his voice but also gave me a canvas to tell a story, a narrative about our relationship,” Sabyn says. “About being able to bury the hatchet, being able to learn things about my family and the fulfillment that I had gotten by us just being able to be in each other’s lives consistently.”
Reworking ‘9 to 5’
Randy Parton in turn suggested doing the same with a Dolly Parton song, which eventually led to Sabyn’s newly released “Halfway There” EP on sonaBLAST! Records. The three-track project features “9 to 5 to 9,” a reworking of the 1980 crossover classic; and a remake of “Halfway to Louisville” by country act Johnny Berry and the Outliers.
“I try to work within the confines of a piece of music as built,” Sabyn says. For ‘9 to 5,’ I wanted to continue on in the story about grinding, climbing the proverbial ladder, working hard to get where you’d at. It turned into a banger.”
The original “9 to 5” served as a theme song for the film of the same name starring Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. It earned two Grammys and an Oscar nomination. The country queen remade it for a Super Bowl ad earlier this year.
Aunt Dolly gave Sabyn her “full blessing” on his redo. In a statement, she said she was “very proud of my nephew.”
“Like his dad, my brother Randy, Sabyn has a great gift for music. And I’d like to think he gets a little of that from me,” she wrote, adding her trademark wink. “Although I don’t rap, I’m wrapped up in the idea and hopes of a bright music future for Sabyn.”
Hello, Dolly
Sabyn met his aunt for the first time in 2012, backstage in Nashville during a performance of “9 to 5: The Musical,” which features music and lyrics by Dolly Parton. He says it was “like something out of a movie.”
“It was like Betty Boop had come to life. She was super kind and gracious,” he says. “She’s everything that everybody says about her.”
Randy Parton hoped to enjoy his son’s burgeoning success and share it with his sister. But he died in January of cancer at 67 years old. Though the reunion was short lived, Sabyn looks back on it as a pivotal moment in his musical evolution.
“It just gave me the encouragement and the fulfillment that I needed, internally, to put myself out there in a way that I was maybe reluctant to do. I think it really helped me find my voice,” he says. “This to me is the opportunity for a dream come true. Having said that, I wanna be realistic about my expectations. Even if this does great or does OK or does whatever, this is the new journey, and I’m staying on it.”