In 2022, the Dallas MC BigXthaPlug released “Texas,” a slide-guitar-accented boast celebrating his home state’s largesse (“We still ride in swangas and put diamonds in our necklace”) and his own hardness (with a shout-out to former Dallas Mavericks player Luka Dončić). Its Southern-fried vibe and BigX’s booming, honey-dipped voice helped put him on the radar of multiple artists operating in the country sphere, including Jelly Roll, who invited BigX to the Stagecoach festival.
I Hope You’re Happy is the result of that cross-pollination; it’s clearly intended to appeal to country listeners who don’t mind when Kane Brown or Morgan Wallen drop a hip-hop signifier or two into their songs. Trap snares flit around the project, but its heart is on Music Row, with stadium-ready hooks sung by country chart-toppers like affable everyman Luke Combs and TikTok-born sensation Bailey Zimmerman.
Much of Happy focuses on tear-in-the-beer heartbreak, although BigX’s lyrical nuance adds depth to those feelings — on the title track, he circles the self-pity of Darius Rucker’s drawled chorus with pulled-taffy vocals offering sincere well-wishing, while his hexing of an ex on the Ella Langley-assisted “Hell at Night” is ice cold. The project’s most intriguing offering is “24-7,” a lusty country-soul cut with blasts of brass, a frizzled guitar solo, and an incendiary chorus belted by the singer-songwriter INK, a newly minted artist who’s been writing hits (“Luther,” “Texas Hold ’Em”) for a minute.
In a way, I Hope You’re Happy is a temperature check for where country is in the back half of 2025. Raspy guys (Jelly Roll, Zimmerman, Thomas Rhett) are in, especially when they’re brooding; alt-rock-inspired touches like the stomping and hollering chorus of “Home,” which pairs BigX with genre-bending phenom Shaboozey, and minor-key maelstroms like “Pray Hard,” where Combs and BigX team up for a gratitude-fueled victory lap, are also hot. BigXthaPlug offers a compelling invitation to other artists who have been thinking about giving genre flights of fancy a shot.
