‘Hee Haw’ Hip-Hop

The new hit video has the all the familiar rap cliches: curvy women in bikinis, glowering homeboys in sports jerseys, guest artists throwing their hands in the air like they just don’t care and ... Georgia farm boys wrestling with pigs?

The video is for the track “Ugly,” and it presents to the world a 24-year-old rap newcomer who goes by the name Bubba Sparxxx. His debut album, “Dark Days, Bright Nights,” entered the U.S. sales chart at No. 3 last week, and with a growing fan base and music industry buzz, Sparxxx looks to be a star in the making. But the most intriguing story line here is the hood that Sparxxx hails from: tiny LaGrange, Ga., where you’ll find dirt roads, not urban mean streets, and more fans of the Charlie Daniels Band than the Wu-Tang Clan.

“Historic, really,” is how Sparxxx (born Warren Anderson Mathis) modestly sums up his rise from the land of red clay to the ranks of rhyming MTV stars. Interestingly, the white, beefy, former sporting goods salesman’s appraisal may not be that far off.

Although hip-hop’s consumer base in the U.S. is largely suburban and white, the music is still the sound of urban American youth, and the African American experience remains its defining rhythm. But as it closes its second decade as a commercial force in pop music, Sparxxx is Exhibit A that the genre’s permutations cannot be placed in a tidy beatbox. Eminem, a white product of the Detroit inner city, proved that race is not a barrier to rap superstardom, and now Sparxxx looks to show that the genre’s landscape also stretches to the backwoods, well beyond big city limits.

“The music belongs to everybody and to everyplace,” Sparxxx says. “My music is about who I am and where I’m from, what I’ve seen. That’s what makes it so hip-hop and why street people in urban areas relate to it. Hip-hop is rooted in authenticity, and this is as authentic as it gets.”

“Authenticity” may seem an odd description for casual observers who hear only “Ugly,” a playful track that samples a Missy Elliott hit and revels in Southern stereotypes. The video, for instance, features tractor races, bug zappers and a beauty contest that looks like lost footage from “Deliverance.” The song could easily be dismissed as a novelty and its performer shrugged off as a less-rocking acolyte of Kid Rock, but the industry buzz suggests there’s more substantial heat with Sparxxx. The album’s first-week sales of 132,000 copies was due in large part, it seems, to the success of the video on MTV and its tastemaker show, “Total Request Live.”

“I was skeptical, and then I heard the rest of the album,” says Violet Brown, urban music buyer for the Wherehouse chain of stores. “This guy is really credible and he has skills, more than you hear in ‘Ugly.’ This is not a novelty album. This album is going to be around awhile.”

The humor of the first song and the fact that Bubba Sparxxx is a rare white rapper has led to some predictable comparisons to Eminem, a fellow Interscope Records act, but Sparxxx shrugs that off. “If you compare me to Eminem, I say thank you,” Sparxxx says. “He is one of the best, if not the best, that’s ever done this. At the same time, the fact of the matter is the comparison begins and ends with us being white. We’re two different people from different parts of the country with two different visions of hip-hop.”

Sparxxx’s musical vision, at times a “Hee Haw” hip-hop that pairs banjos and vinyl scratching, was shaped in part by his rap idols, chief among them OutKast, the mercurial Atlanta duo that has made a reputation as hip-hop innovators.

His vision was also informed by his life experience in LaGrange. He was the only child of Jimmy and June Mathis, but grew up in a home with four of their children from previous marriages. His mother worked as a grocery cashier, and his father’s jobs included driving a potato chip delivery truck and a school bus. Neither had much time for music in their lives, he says, because “music was fantasy world; they were thinking about paying the bills.”

When there was music in the home it was either country music or his older brother’s heavy metal collection, but Sparxxx was more intrigued by the mix tapes of hip-hop that a cousin would mail him from New York. The music of Too $hort and N.W.A seemed like broadcasts from another planet, and it was a world that fascinated the youngster.

Sparxxx was compelled to follow in the footsteps of his rap idols, but his appearance and surroundings made it difficult. “Vanilla Ice set white rappers back 10 years,” he says ruefully. He was booed at talent shows and ignored on the stages of dingy Alabama clubs.

But as he honed his skills he began to find more acceptance. An independent label put some of his music out last year, and it came to the attention of Interscope talent scout Gerardo Mejia (also known for a fleeting singing career and the hit “Rico Suave”) and eventually reached Timbaland, the celebrated rap producer, who was looking to tap artists for his new Interscope imprint, Beat Club Records.

Timbaland helmed six tracks on the new album and--in a fashion that recalls Dr. Dre’s role as mentor to Eminem--the producer has become a hip-hop elder and friend to Sparxxx, lending him instant credibility in a genre where perceptions are vital.

Even without that imprimatur, though, Sparxxx connects with rap fans on his own merits, according to Interscope chief Jimmy Iovine. The music executive, who has worked closely with Dre, Eminem and other top rap stars, says it “took a generation” for young white artists to rise in an organic and authentic way in hip-hop circles, and with rappers popping up in new regions and even overseas, Sparxxx is in tune with the music’s eclectic future.

“When I first met him, I felt that he was of a generation that was a true product of the hip-hop culture,” Iovine says. “Here is a Southern kid who is truly inspired and influenced by hip-hop music and black culture. And when I met him he even said, ‘Where I come from, without hip-hop, I would never have been the kind of person I am.’ That’s the thing about hip-hop that most people don’t understand--what it has brought together. This music has an impact on people’s way of life and their souls and their hearts.”

Sparxxx, in classic rapper fashion, is a big-talking salesman for himself (“I’m an arrogant, confident guy by nature,” he notes matter-of-factly), but while he predicts blockbuster success for himself, he says his music may be a greater testament to the world that created him.

“The South has come a long way, and my existence is evidence of that,” Sparxxx says. “I mean, a white kid from the rural South participating in hip-hop at a high level? C’mon man, that’s proof. We’re not out of the woods yet, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s getting better and it’s getting interesting.”