Breland blurs music borders
Singer’s single ‘My Truck’ is the most viable fusion of rural and urban since ‘Old Town Road,’ and his new EP pushes the sound even further
In the video for Breland’s breakout single, “My Truck,” the twangy sung intro is mouthed by a stoic Marlboro Man type. But then comes Breland, wiry and enthusiastic, shoving him out of the frame to take over the singing, providing an object lesson in genre and racial expectations. “My Truck,” one of the year’s most beguiling singles, is a fluent amalgam of country verbiage and vocal texture with hip-hop bluster and cadence. “Woodgrain dash with the matteblack finish,” Breland singraps, “and it match my shawty with the big ol’ butt.”
Breland made the song last September, in between writing R&B demos, as both an exercise and an inspired bit of strategy. “I’ve had a Billboard Pro membership for years,” he said recently in a FaceTime interview from his Atlanta home, wearing a shirt that read “Godfidence.” “I was aware of the fact that the biggest record of all time is a country-trap song by an unknown artist from Atlanta, and now no one else is putting out songs that sound like that. Wide open. Why on earth would I not give it a shot?”
“My Truck” — his first attempt — manages to be playful without being kitsch, earnestly embracing the truck culture of the South while sprinkling in some frisky lyrics and arched-eyebrow metacommentary about being a black performer in a traditionally white space: “Scuff these Jordans/You can say you hate me.” It’s a little bit of a dare from someone gleefully divebombing into rural aesthetics.
“I’m the fourth-wall breaker,” Breland said. “It is impossible for me to exist in this space and not acknowledge the fact that it’s a little weird.”
This was the future promised by “Old Town Road,” which went from holy-wow phenomenon to were-we-ever-so-silly memory, becoming the longest-running No. 1 in Billboard Hot 100 history along the way. Country and hip-hop had been fraternizing for years, formally and informally, but in the wake of “Old Town Road,” there was curiously little action (apart from “The Git Up,” a genteel trifle by Blanco Brown).
Breland — a 24-year-old genre-fluid pop-minded talent with a lithe singing voice and an instinctual ability to mimic Young Thug-esque flow patterns — savvily jumped into that vacuum. On May 22, he released his self-titled debut EP (on Bad Realm/ Atlantic), full of breezy, intuitive songs that make light work of the borders between country, hip-hop, R&B and pop, including country-themed trap (“Horseride”), country-textured R&B (“Wifi”) and hip-hop-accented pop country (“In the Woulds,” with the country singers Chase Rice and Lauren Alaina). It’s a huge swing and also utterly logical.
Breland’s approach is a successor to both the country rap tunes that dominated the South in the 1990s and 2000s and also the hip-hop-inflected country that’s been a persistent presence in Nashville in the 2010s, best espoused by Sam Hunt (and less impressively by umpteen of his peers).
Yet Breland, born Daniel Breland, wasn’t raised in either of those traditions — he grew up in a New Jersey household of gospel singers, and sang and arranged a cappella with a group called the Phantoms when he was in college at Georgetown.
After graduation, Breland moved to Atlanta and began writing predominantly R&B songs, around 2,000 in three years, he estimates, with only flickers of success. But he was diligent, and also impressive enough of a singer that when he posted Chris Brown covers, Brown would sometimes repost them. He got used to sharing snippets of new work on his Instagram story, which is where he first posted the “My Truck” hook and received encouragement to release it on his own.
“‘My Truck’ can be a very polarizing song,” Breland said. “The question for me to answer was, ‘Do I believe that I could pull this song off?’ And then the answer that I had was: ‘Why not, right? Why not me?’ ”
Breland also caught the ear of Hunt, Nashville’s preeminent hybridizer. In late February, they wrote music together in Hunt’s producer’s studio in Nashville, and they have plans to reconnect in June.
“I really knew from hearing ‘My Truck’ that he was talented, but being in the room with him, it was another level,” Hunt said in a phone interview. One of the ideas they kicked around was a “My Truck” remix with Hunt on it. Over the next few weeks, Hunt wrote several verses, and settled on two, including lyrics that are, Hunt said, “as far into rural country as I’ve ever gone”: “Toolbox full of dirty doveshot empties, muddy old clodhoppers and a Mossberg pump/Pull up on you at the red light, homie, throw some Bone Thugs on and make your loose change jump.”
For the video, he bought the kind of pickup truck he had in mind when writing the verse, a 1993 Chevrolet C/K 1500 4x4. Part of the excitement of the song — in addition to hearing Hunt sing Breland’s boast, “Young, rich and I’m pretty” — is hearing Hunt, a syrupy country singer, lean into the melodies and patterns Breland established, a proof-of-concept for more aggressive blends of country, R&B and hip-hop on the horizon.
Much of the balancing act for Breland moving forward involves courting both sides. He has two managers — one from the world of hip-hop and R&B, one from country. The coronavirus pandemic led him to cancel his promotional tour, a frustration for John McMann, Atlantic’s senior vice president of pop and rhythmic promotion, who was keen to get the effervescent Breland in rooms with radio decisionmakers: “He’s the textbook built artist to do the promo game, go from market to market and break down the doors,” McMann said.
Instead of a tour, Breland did Instagram Live performances for more than 50 radio stations while locked down with his family in New Jersey. And he opened up a contest for songwriters to contribute verses to “In the Woulds.” He posts comedic videos on TikTok, including “How to Make a Drake Song in 1 Minute” and one, for “Horseride,” in which he stands on his father’s back as he crawls across the living room floor.
“The one thing that I didn’t want to do was lose steam,” Breland said. “You know how music is — the sounds change every six months, for real.”