Song Review – Ernest’s “Gettin’ Gone” (feat. Snoop Dogg)

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photo: Braden Walker


#577 (Country Soul) on the Country DDS.

Your natural inclination is to tell Ernest to choose a lane. With songs like his Double Platinum Top 20 hit “Flower Shops,” or “Would If I Could” from his 2024 album Nashville, Tennessee, he captures the absolute best of traditional country music in the modern context. He’s more true country than even Zach Top, and with better songs. The guy truly deserves to be in the conversation as one of the top traditionalists of our time.

Then of course he’ll be hanging out with Morgan Wallen and Hardy, and release some sort of godawful Bro-Country redux. Both of these sides of Ernest were on display when he performed at the Two Step Inn Festival in central Texas earlier this month. He played the two aformentioned traditional country tunes and it was excellent. The previous year Ernest also hosted a Keith Whitley tribute at the festival with Zach Top and Sierra Ferrell performing. It was lights out too.

But then Ernest pulled out some sort of drum-programmed hip-hop garbage at Two Step Inn, and then sang “I Had Some Help”—the huge mega summer hit from Morgan Wallen and Post Malone. Ernest was one of the eight songwriters on the track, so apparently he has just as much agency to perform it as anyone else, even if it stuck out like a sort thumb at a traditional/independent country festival.

When word leaked out that Ernest had been spotted in downtown Nashville recently with Snoop Dogg shooting some sort of video, you expected the worst. Let’s not forget that Ernest’s career started in country rap and Bro-Country even before he blew up as part of the Morgan Wallen crew. Hanging out with Snoop Dogg could only lead to some terrible country rap hybrid.

But as bad as this could have been, it doesn’t sound bad at all. Instead of mixing country and rap, it blends country and soul, not dissimilar to the music of folks like Brent Cobb or Adam Hood, with a distinct vintage feel. It’s Southern mood music. And no, it’s not really Snoop Dogg’s “gone country” moment any more than singing “Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die” with Willie Nelson was, which to be frank, was more shticky and cringe than this is.

Snoop Dogg isn’t going country. At this point he’ll do anything. He’s out there starring in T-Mobile commercials. How gangster. Really, what this song is mostly about is Ernest starting his own label called DeVille Records, which will nest beneath the surging label Big Loud. This is the reason Ernest is driving a vintage Cadillac DeVille in the video for “Gettin’ Gone.”

Snoop Dogg’s verses are really what drag the song down. They just don’t offer a lot of value to what the song is supposed to be about and are more about turning the attention to Snoop Dogg. And since it’s Snoop Dogg, of course there has to be weed references and such. At this point Snoop Dogg feels like a caricature of himself.

In this moment when Lana Del Rey, Ed Sheeran, Post Malone 2.0, Chappell Roan, Julien Baker and Torres, Beyoncé, and just about everyone else is deciding to “go country,” this feels harmless, or almost welcomed. You want to get incited about a country/rap collaboration, try on “All The Way” by BigXthaPlug featuring Bailey Zimmerman, which happens to be the #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart at the moment.

As strange as it may seem, Ernest is part of the effort pulling country more country these days, including influencing Morgan Wallen more in that direction. If he wants to have some fun with Snoop Dogg, it might be forgettable, but it also feels harmless.

6.5/10

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