We’re telling our story and our life, it’s really personal when you do that and people f### with it. Zooming out beyond the most obnoxious examples, though, the term struggle rapper has often been used as a wholesale classification for two, sometimes overlapping types of aspiring rappers. The first of these two categories are those rappers who most closely match the description I outlined above.
The Country Satire That Jimmy Buffet Wrote Under the Monopoly Board Game Alias Marvin Gardens, “Why Don’t We Get Drunk”
Even A$AP Rocky, who seemed to be an organic case of a people’s champion breaking into the ranks of rap’s mainstream, was carefully orchestrated, a “long con” masterminded by A$AP founder and spirit guide, Yams. When asked what it was like coming back to his life after spending five years in prison, the singer says that it certainly struggle rapper wasn’t easy — but time made him realize what was most important, like his friendship with country singer and rapper Jelly Roll. “I love country music. It’s part of my history, and my background, and the backdrop of my childhood,” he says. “So ‘Monte Carlo,’ the song and the album is that bridge where it’s the best of both worlds.”
Rapper Struggle Jennings Shoots Music Video Behind Prison Walls
Harness was incarcerated on drug-related charges in 2011.[2] In 2013 he appeared on Yelawolf’s mixtape Wyte Dawg and released his nine-track album I Am Struggle. Struggle and his mother, Jenni Eddy Jennings, created their Spiritual Warfare EP towards the end of 2018. On January 15, 2019, Struggle and his oldest daughter, singer Brianna Harness, released a collaborative EP entitled Sunny Days which snagged the #3 spot on Billboard Blues Albums charts. In February 2019, he also released his first solo studio album since 2011 via his own label called “Angels & Outlaws” formed that same year. From taking over the playground to dominating the rap game, many young artists have made music history.
- It’s not that SHIRT doesn’t produce or use the means at his disposal—he’s released at least a half-dozen albums since 2010, he’s made numerous conceptual videos that, if not quite avant-garde, speak to innovation, art and downright silliness.
- Troubadour of Troubled Souls was a collection of all the different stuff I went through.
- “I can’t believe you,” Wanda Durant said as her smiling son fell back into her arms.
Struggle Jennings
- We mock this particular group of rappers incessantly because they don’t appear to possess the necessary self-awareness to realize that their ambitions far outweigh their talent.
- His blog and Instagram account are largely non-self-promotional aesthetic endeavors.
- I’m a gangster, but I want my son to get more out of life than I did.
- But Struggle has too much talent, and the songs of Waylon are too important, and the subject of country rap too polarizing to make an entire album without the originator of the material being present to voice his pleasure or dissent.
- In December he released a new song called “Drinking Alone,” from an album called Monte Carlo, which he expects to release this April.
In fact—shortly before he began to serve his prison sentence, Struggle began to embrace his heritage for the first time since his mother broke free to make it on her own all of those years ago. Donning the name “Struggle Jennings,” he worked up an incredibly moving tune built around a sample from his grandpa’s famous “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand? ” The resulting track—“Outlaw”—served as the first of a long line of powerful songs from the younger Jennings. Nashville rapper Struggle Jennings reps a city not exactly known for its gang violence, so the level of brutality unleashed in his new video “Black Curtains” may come as a bit of a surprise. When considering family tradition, however, it may not—Jennings is the grandson of late country music legend Waylon Jennings, one of the notorious godfathers of the rough and raw “outlaw country” genre.
- With the Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams project, there was protest, and a fundamental feeling that those songs were not anyone’s to do with what they pleased; a feeling shared by the executors of the Williams estate.
- Now, one of the biggest things that keeps me sane is getting on Instagram or YouTube and watching all the comments.
- They may very well make decent music, but the quality of their output is sadly irrelevant because the time and resources they sink into their craft simply never pays dividends in the form of listenership, recognition, or acclaim.
Per its website, the label aims to merge “artistic inspiration with innovative design.” He produces a wide variety of merchandise— from sweatshirts and eyewear to mugs and paintings, Smith has a little bit of something for everybody. Then, at only 12 and 13 years old, the two kids released “Jump,” one of the hottest records of that decade. The song went double platinum and sold over two million copies. Chris “Mac Daddy” Kelly and Chris “Daddy Mac” Smith went on to drop a total of three albums by 1996.
Struggle Jennings Talks About Grandpa Waylon And New Joint Record With Jelly Roll
From acting to dancing, she’s already following in her father’s footsteps. While the Hip Hop industry is mainly known to foster adults, there have been a number of youngsters who’ve jumped in as rappers. Though small in size, they carried loads of confidence and even were equipped with the same — or more — level talent than some of their older counterparts. If people get just one thing from the “Black Curtains” video, what do you want that to be? I’m a gangster, but I want my son to get more out of life than I did. And with the examples we’re setting right now, their vision is distorted right out the gate.
- The precursor to I Am Struggle was a country rap single built from Waylon’s song “Outlaw Shit,” a slower, newer version of his classic “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out Of Hand?
- He brought the group several hits with verses on songs like “Back That Azz Up,” “Tha Block Is Hot,” “Bling Bling” and countless others.
- In late 2020, Jennings and Jelly Roll released their fourth joint-record to date, Waylon & Willie IV, which serves as a testament to the tremendous growth Jennings has undertaken in the past four years.
- The U.S. Olympic delegation vowed to appeal the latest decision, and officials said they have video proof that the appeal was filed within the one-minute time limit, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport has so far refused to reconsider its decision.
- There, he was able to jumpstart his music career by going back and forth to the studio.
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Growing up in the age of digital media, the star decided to capitalize off her internet following. Miss Mulatto, which was her former moniker, would start posting original rap songs and music videos to her YouTube channel, and garner millions of views in the process. It’s not that SHIRT doesn’t produce or use the means at his disposal—he’s released at least a half-dozen albums since 2010, he’s made numerous conceptual videos that, if not quite avant-garde, speak to innovation, art and downright silliness. He regularly releases non-album freestyles and one-offs.
About Struggle Jennings
Sitting across from Sonya Curry, Wanda Durant didn’t totally feel the decision, either. The U.S. Olympic delegation vowed to appeal the latest decision, and officials said they have video proof that the appeal was filed within the one-minute time limit, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport has so far refused to reconsider its decision. Chiles was already back in the United States when the decision to revoke her medal was made. The last-minute score change outraged the Romanian delegation, who appealed to CAS, a governing body that handles high-level judging disputes. When the court came back with their decision, they found that because the U.S. had filed their appeal four seconds over the one-minute timeframe to request a second look, the readjusted score was invalid.
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Years later, we feel silly looking back on these exchanges, wondering why we were so quick to write off certain rappers without giving them a shot. Sure, there’s the risk that their music might suck, but this is a risk we take 25 times a day when we click on literally any link on the internet. It’s a risk you took, quite frankly, when you clicked on this article. Luckily, as with all aspects of hip-hop culture that get co-opted by the mainstream, it seems like the term “struggle rapper” has finally begun to outlive its usefulness. Just as I had no way of foreseeing that the rapper who emailed me to request that I write his tell-all biography would carve out a modest audience for himself on streaming services, we are all now less equipped than ever to make these sorts of judgment calls. Now, Shanté still spends a lot of her time in front of the mic – but in a different way.
