Bubba Sparxxx

Known for his twangy take on the Dirty South sound, rapper Bubba Sparxxx rose to prominence in the early aughts through a series of releases that seamlessly amalgamated hardcore hip-hop with country and rock music. Born Warren Anderson Mathis on March 6, 1977, he grew up in a rural community right outside LaGrange, Georgia. He was introduced to hip-hop by a neighbor and quickly developed a voracious appetite for the genre, listening to everything from 2 Live Crew and Outkast to N.W.A or Too Short. Rapping, which started as a hobby during his teenage years, would later become his full-time job after meeting producers Bobby Stamps and Shannon Houchins. The duo worked with the up-and-coming rapper on his studio debut Dark Days, Bright Nights, which saw the light in 2001. The album became quite popular in the Georgia rap scene and caught the attention of Interscope Record's Jimmy Iovine, who signed Bubba Sparxxx to their roster and paired him up with producers Timbaland and Organized Noize. It was precisely thanks to the Timbaland collaboration "Ugly" that the album's reissue reached Number 3 on the Billboard 200 and was later certified gold. Even though follow-up albums Deliverance (2003) and The Charm (2006) enjoyed great critical reception, things seemed to cool off in the following years, and subsequent releases like Pain Management (2013) and Made on McCosh Mill Road (2016) barely scraped the Top 50 of the country charts in the US. Starting in 2018, Bubba Sparxxx has been releasing music under his New South Entertainment, including the LPs Rapper From the Country (2018), King of Crap (2020), and Life Is Serious (2022) with Los Ghost.