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Farewell Post Malone, Leaving Hip-Hop for Country & Rock

In some of the most abrupt news of the week, White Iverson rapper Post Malone is reportedly ditching the grills and braids in favour of a six-string and bootcut jeans. The rapper reportedly declined a spot in the recently-announced 2016 XXL Freshman Class on the grounds that he was moving away from the genre.

“We were told by his camp that he wasn’t paying attention to hip-hop so much, he was going in more of a rock-pop-country direction” said XXL‘s editor in chief Vanessa Satten.

“Once we heard that he wasn’t really acknowledging hip-hop – especially when they were telling us: ‘We’re going in a country direction,’ that’s a message that you don’t really wanna be in the hip-hop world – so we’re just gonna let it go.”

Given that the rapper performed a cover of Nirvana’s Lithium in a surprise set at Coachella Festival this year, along with uploading YouTube covers of Bob Dylan and generally other non-rap artists, maybe this wasn’t the most surprising news.

He’s hardly the first to cross genres, and I suppose we wish him all the best in his future endeavours. Skrillex was MySpace’s MySpaciest emo kid in From First To Last well before he learnt how to create chaos on his computer. perhaps he could take advice from Taylor Swift, who was a bonafide country music star before she arrived at her pop throne. Jazz bass maestro Thundercat played in Suicidal Tendencies before switching to jazz and hip-hop full time, while The Beastie Boys were similarly a punk band before they turned toward hip-hop.

It’ll be interesting to see if this real or not, and if he finds more happiness and success in the country and rock world.

Image: Forbes