Accusing someone of “gatekeeping” is just an intellectually lazy, thought and discussion-ending enterprise designed to win arguments online as opposed to addressing the very real and systemic issues.
It’s not just that it isn’t country. It’s that it’s just not good. If this is who you want to integrate country music with, and use to highlight the genre’s Black roots, you will do significantly more harm than good in that pursuit.
Lo and behold, as elite media is praising BigXthaPlug to the hilt because they hate country and country fans, this dude is locked in the slammer once again on the day of his album release.
Though 2025 continues to see the rise in popularity of more country-sounding songs, this parallels a dramatic rise in really really bad straight up pop and hip-hop tracks being inexplicably pushed to the country market.
It remains an unfortunate aspect of the modern media landscape that whenever higher institutions broach the subject of country music, it’s commonly done by someone uniquely unqualified to speak on the matter.
When word leaked out that Ernest had been spotted in downtown Nashville recently with Snoop Dogg shooting a video, you expected the worst. But as bad as this could have been, it doesn’t sound bad at all.