People are celebrating the “hip hop-ification” of country music.

They’re treating it like a victory lap. The last holdout has fallen. Total cultural dominance achieved.

I think it’s the opposite. This feels less like a triumph and more like a death knell.

Country music started as Black music. The banjo came from enslaved Africans. DeFord Bailey was a star of early country radio, until he wasn’t welcome anymore. The culture slowly expelled the people who built it, then rewrote the origin story.

Hip hop stayed relevant because it resisted that process. When white artists crossed the line, they got called out. Gatekeeping was not a bug. It was the immune system.

Kid Rock was the warning shot. He started in hip hop, then pivoted to country. He’s trash, but even he knew there were limits. He cosplayed. He didn’t try to erase the lineage.

The next wave will not be that restrained. Especially when the original line between country and blues was racial segregation pretending to be taste.

When rich white artists make country that sounds like hip hop, strip out the history, and call it innovation, that’s when hip hop actually dies.

Rock already went that way. We know how this ends.