Post Malone two-steps his way into country with stompin’ guitar jams

Almost a decade after his hip-hop debut, Stoney, Post Malone’s sixth album sees the tattooed Texas rapper going all in for FM Country. There’s no hick-hop or pop fusion on F-1 Trillion’s solid, stompin’ geetar jams, which feature a rhinestone constellation of collabs with the genre’s biggest stars. Everyone from Dolly Parton to Hank Williams Jr features, as does current country poster boy Luke Combs, with whom Malone is shown popping into some festival Portaloos on the video for single “Guy for That”. 

As the bearded bros throw beefy arms around each other’s shoulders, their husky-hearty vocals, over a meaty slab of electro-acoustic strumming, rock-steady drumming and desperado fiddles, give listeners a good sense of how the rest of the record plays out. 

Although some fans have expressed surprise at Posty’s decision to swap his cornrows for a Stetson, it turns out he always said he’d go country at 30. In the event, he’s still only 29, but says the high life has aged him. Like the blues, country music has its roots in life’s struggles. Traditionally, those struggles have been linked to rural poverty and the domestic drudgery of staying faithful in a world where people married and became parents young, yet Posty points out that even pop stars can get ground down by the slog of the job.

“Four years ago, I was on a rough path,” he told CBS this week. “It was terrible… Getting up, having a good cry, drinking, and then going on living your life, and then whenever you go lay down, drinking some more and having a good cry.” 

Now he says he’s happy and settled with his fiance and daughter. So the uniquely messy vulnerability of old hits like “Chemical” and “Sunflower” are traded for plain dealing. His vocals, in the past often sloshing through the mix and distorted with reverb, are clear as he gets up close and personal with the mic, but the sound and sentiments are more honest – and perhaps more generic.

“I made all my money singin’ so sad and lonely songs,” he acknowledges on “Right About You”. “But all my diamonds came from dirt/ The more I love you, the less I hurt.” Malone was always a sharp lyricist, and here he enjoys throwing himself into the wit and rhyme-flipping wordplay of classic country. Like rap, country has always embraced an outlaw, and later in the same song, he admits: “I wrote songs about sinnin’, evil women, pills and cars/ I wrote songs about drinkin’ ’til you walked in and raised the bar.” 

“Right about You” is one of only three songs Malone sings alone on F1-Trillion: a fact hat-tipped on lead single (feat Morgan Wallace) “I Had Some Help”. It’s mostly the guys with whom he shares the ride. Tim McGraw (perhaps best known to pop fans as the subject of a 2006 Taylor Swift song) shares bragging vocal duties on banjo-flecked opener “Wrong Ones”, on which Malone recalls the excesses of his early celebrity: “I got ‘Fuck You’ money/ Girl, come on and get you some… Got a six-pack and a farmer’s tan, on top of the world/ I can’t help that they want a glance.”

Later he pals up with 2000s bro-country star Blake Shelton on the swaggering “Pour Me a Drink”. Shelton’s cleaner singing style gives a Texas skyscraper sheen to Malone’s gruffness as the pair decide to drown their sorrows after “Dallas dropped another game in overtime/ Caught a ticket speeding down the 65” and “My baby’s goner than the Tulsa wind”.

Lainy Wilson adds tenderness to the heartbreak on pick-slapped “Nosedive” (whose melody takes some rewarding, unexpected twists to counter the bar-room predictability) and Dolly Parton brings her usual spunk to “Have the Heart”. At 78, the country queen still brings the chemistry to duets. “Wanna hear something sexy?” she winks to camera at one point. “What the hell is one more night going to hurt?”

After Beyoncé brought country music back into the spotlight this spring, I’ve noticed my kids are playing loads of it. My 12-year-old daughter’s Spotify playlist features Dasha’s “Austin (Boots Stop Workin’)”, RaeLynn’s “Keep Up” and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song: Tipsy”. So it seems Posty is bang on trend to keep the ears of all the kids who discovered him through the 2018 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse soundtrack single “Sunflower”.

Although this album loses some of his distinctive sound – and has none of the cool experiments of Beyoncé’s record – it also showcases his undeniable song-crafting chops. Drivetime DJs are going to love it, and their listeners are all going to feel they’re at the wheels of beaten-up American trucks. 

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