Mondegreen isn’t the only music festival in the region this weekend. The Philadelphia Folk Festival, which runs through Sunday, closed last night’s bill with Gangstagrass, which might mark the first time rap has been represented among all that acoustic music.
Hip-hop/country crossovers have become increasingly common, but they mostly meld mainstream country with modern R&B. Gangstagrass, like its name implies, combines the more purist forms of rap and bluegrass. Most people think they’re diametric opposites.
“One of the hurdles we face is if we say, ‘This is bluegrass hip-hop music,’ people immediately imagine something terrible and start running in the other direction,” said Rench, the Brooklyn producer who formed Gangstagrass in 2006 (he was born Oscar Owens). “But if people just hear it, they’re like, ‘Hey, this is cool. What is this?'” That was my reaction.
Gangstagrass reached a wider audience in 2010, when it was it was tapped to write the theme song for “Justified,” the FX drama about a U.S. Marshall in Harlan County, Ky., inspired by an Elmore Leonard novella.
Rench has collaborated with various MCs over the years. The most recent LP, “The Blackest Thing on the Menu,” features two he’s been working with for several years, Dolio The Sleuth and R-Son The Voice of Reason. They even made a video for the song that would, with a more commercial group, be the lead single.
