Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" sat at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for 19 weeks across 2024 and into 2025, the longest run of any single by a Black artist since Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's "One Sweet Day" in 1996. The follow up project, "Where I've Been, Isn't Where I'm Going," went platinum in February. By itself, that record might have been written off as one off crossover. Eighteen months later, the lane is too crowded to dismiss. BigXthaPlug's "Take Care," released in November, has logged 1.4 billion on-demand streams in the United States. The album debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 and number 1 on the country albums chart simultaneously, the first such double in the chart's history.
The bigger picture is that the genre boundary between country and hip hop has eroded faster than label A&R departments have been willing to acknowledge in public. RIAA data shows that 2025 was the first year in the modern streaming era in which country streaming revenue grew faster than hip hop streaming revenue, with country up 23 percent and hip hop up 11 percent. Inside that country growth, the largest single contribution came from songs and albums that pull production techniques, vocal cadences, and feature artists from hip hop. Luminate's 2026 mid year report shows the trend continuing, with country streams up 27 percent year over year through Q1.
The artists. Shaboozey is recording in Music Row studios with country songwriters Jessie Jo Dillon and Mark Holman while keeping his publishing with EMPIRE. He sold out the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in January and is currently on a 31 date amphitheater tour with Zach Bryan. BigXthaPlug, the Dallas rapper, has built a touring base across the South that crosses traditional country and hip hop venue lines. He played the Houston Rodeo in March, the Tortuga Music Festival in April, and is booked at Stagecoach in Indio April 25-27. Kane Brown, who has worked the bridge from the country side for several years, released "The High Road Deluxe" in January with features from Marshmello, Khalid, and Jelly Roll.
The newer wave includes Jelly Roll, who is technically not new but has crossed fully into country radio and country touring after a hip hop start, Bailey Zimmerman whose songwriting borrows openly from emo rap, and Warren Zeiders. From the country side, Cody Johnson and Riley Green are now collaborating with hip hop producers. Kelsea Ballerini's recent project featured beats from Wheezy. Morgan Wallen's "I'm the Problem" album closed 2025 with three songs that lean into trap drums and 808 sub-bass. Two years ago that production would have been kept off the country radio adds list. In 2026 it is the country radio adds list.
The structural reason this is working is the same reason most genre crossovers work: streaming has destroyed the radio playlist as the gatekeeper of audience definition. Spotify's editorial playlists Hot Country, Country Rap, and New Boots have a combined 14 million followers. Apple Music's "Today's Country" reorganized in March to give explicit cross-genre slots. TikTok, which essentially functions as the front door of contemporary music discovery, has seen country tagged audio grow 47 percent year over year while hip hop tagged audio grew 12 percent. Songs that pull from both buckets get pushed in both buckets.
The business numbers behind this. Live Nation's Q4 2025 earnings call flagged country and country adjacent touring as the fastest growing segment of its live business, with average per show gross up 23 percent year over year. Pollstar's Q1 2026 report has Zach Bryan's tour at $214 million in projected gross by the time it concludes in October, the largest country tour in history. Shaboozey's amphitheater tour is averaging $1.4 million per night. BigXthaPlug played a sold out United Center on April 14, three years after he was opening club dates in Dallas for $5 thousand a show.
Songwriting credits are where the future of the lane will be written. The Nashville Songwriters Association International noted in its January state of the industry report that the percentage of top 50 country songs co-written by writers with hip hop catalog credits rose from 4 percent in 2018 to 27 percent in 2025. Publishing houses that signed crossover writers early, including Big Machine, BMG, and Sony Music Publishing Nashville, are reporting their best collection years on record. The legal questions around mechanical and performance royalties for genre-blended songs are still being worked out, with the Mechanical Licensing Collective noting that disputes over country versus hip hop classification have grown 40 percent in the last two years.
What to watch this summer. Stagecoach this weekend will give a measure of where the festival audience sits on country rap. The CMA Fest June 5-8 in Nashville has Shaboozey on the main stage at Nissan Stadium for the first time. The CMT Music Awards on July 14 has BigXthaPlug nominated for three awards including video of the year. The CMA Awards in November will be the first show where the academy's voting body has had two full cycles to acclimate to a country chart that no longer sounds like the country chart of a decade ago. Whether the academy votes for the genre as it actually exists in 2026 will tell us whether the lane has truly crossed over or whether it is still dependent on streaming and touring economies that operate outside of the awards machinery.