No, your TV was not glitching. That really was a Dallas rapper growling 808‑driven bars right in the middle of the Country Music Association Awards.
At the 59th CMA Awards in Nashville, BigXthaPlug joined Luke Combs for a live performance of their country‑rap duet “Pray Hard”. For anyone raised on George Jones and Garth Brooks, seeing a trap verse on country’s biggest stage felt downright surreal. So why is a rapper rapping at the CMAs, and what does it say about where the genre is headed?
Wait… a rapper at the CMA Awards?
The 59th Annual CMA Awards took place at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, hosted by Lainey Wilson and broadcast in prime time. Among the billed performers: Wilson, Luke Combs, Megan Moroney, Zach Top, Shaboozey – and, tucked into that list, Dallas rapper BigXthaPlug, scheduled to join Combs on their song “Pray Hard“.
During the show, Combs opened with his own material before returning later in the night to share the stage with BigX. The Associated Press recap singled out the moment, noting that Combs and the “Dallas rapper BigXThaPlug” helped “hold it down for a new generation of country music fans” and that their duet “Pray Hard” underlined just how far the country‑rap crossover has come.
If you remember the uproar when Beyoncé performed “Daddy Lessons” with the (then) Dixie Chicks at the 2016 CMAs, you know how controversial even a hint of non‑country used to be. Alan Jackson was widely reported to have walked out in protest, and the performance became a symbol of Nashville’s anxiety over pop and R&B infiltrating its awards show. Back then, a Texas‑born global superstar with a country‑flavored song was treated like an invader. Less than a decade later, the CMAs are advertising a Dallas rapper as a selling point.
Meet BigXthaPlug: the Texan dragging 808s into Nashville
BigXthaPlug, born Xavier Landum in Dallas in 1998, first made noise as a Southern hip‑hop artist with tracks like “Texas” and “Mmhmm” and a run of mixtapes steeped in trap beats and gritty autobiographical stories. His early breakout “Texas” was praised for blending gospel, trap, country and blues while shouting out Lone Star culture.
He followed that up with the 2024 album Take Care, which cracked the Billboard 200 top 10 and solidified him as one of Texas rap’s new heavyweights. Even then, you could hear hints of slide guitar, bluesy hooks and wide‑open‑highway imagery sneaking into the production.
The real pivot came with his third studio album, I Hope You’re Happy, officially labeled a country‑rap record and built explicitly as a Nashville‑leaning project. The album pairs BigX’s rumbling baritone with big‑name country guests: Luke Combs, Jelly Roll, Shaboozey, Darius Rucker, Bailey Zimmerman, Ella Langley, Tucker Wetmore and Thomas Rhett all show up across its 11 tracks.
Key singles from that album mapped out his road to the CMA stage:
| Year | BigX’s country moves |
|---|---|
| 2022 | “Texas” blends Southern rap with country and blues, earning attention from Nashville stars. |
| 2024 | Album Take Care hits the Billboard 200 top 10, putting Dallas rap on the national radar. |
| Apr 2025 | “All the Way” with Bailey Zimmerman drops. It is described as a country‑rap breakup ballad with steel guitar over deep bass, and it debuts at No. 4 on the Hot 100 while simultaneously topping both Hot Country Songs and Hot Rap Songs. |
| Jun 2025 | BigX and Zimmerman perform “All the Way” at CMA Fest in Nissan Stadium, where the rapper’s live verse sends the country crowd into a frenzy. BigX calls it a “blessing” to be welcomed at such a core country event. |
| Jun 2025 | At Governors Ball, he tells People he has a “country‑inspired” project, I Hope You’re Happy, and that Nashville is actively inviting him in. Billboard’s Country Power Players honor him with their Innovator Award for bending the genre. |
| Aug 2025 | I Hope You’re Happy arrives as a full country‑rap album, blending trap percussion with Nashville instrumentation across tracks like “Home” with Shaboozey and “Hell at Night” with Ella Langley. |
| Nov 2025 | BigX appears at the 59th CMA Awards to perform “Pray Hard” with Luke Combs on the main broadcast. |
By the time he walked onto that CMA stage, BigX was not some random rapper gate‑crashing country’s big night. He had already scored chart‑topping country‑rap hits and spent the year standing shoulder to shoulder with Nashville’s biggest names.
“Pray Hard” on country’s biggest night
What the song actually is
“Pray Hard” is not a pure hip‑hop track awkwardly jammed into a country show. On record, it is literally categorized as country‑rap and trap. The production opens with acoustic and steel guitar textures that would sit comfortably on a Luke Combs album, then gradually folds in 808s and trap drums. The chorus is all Combs: a belting, gospel‑tinted hook about surviving dark times thanks to a praying mother and a stubborn faith.
BigX’s verses bring the street‑level detail. He raps about near‑misses, bad choices and the sense that he is only alive because somebody kept him in their prayers. Lyrically, it is more spiritual than flexing, closer in theme to an old revival hymn than to club rap.
On the charts, “Pray Hard” did something unusual: without being pushed as a big radio single, it hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Bubbling Under Hot 100, reached No. 30 on Hot Country Songs, and also cracked rap charts, including No. 5 on Rap Digital Song Sales and No. 15 on Hot Rap Songs. In other words, the song was already living in two worlds before the CMAs ever aired it.
Why it works on stage
At the awards show, those genre lines got even blurrier. Combs handled the huge, choir‑ready chorus while the band leaned into guitar and organ, then BigX stomped in with a verse built on the same chord progression but delivered with a trap cadence. Instead of a novelty cameo, the performance felt like a continuation of what the album had already built: Nashville sounds on top, Southern rap muscle in the low end.
For the CMAs, this was not charity. “All the Way” and “Pray Hard” have already proven that country fans will stream and buy tracks that feature a rapper, as long as the songwriting, story and emotional punch still feel recognizably country. From a cold‑eyed industry view, putting BigX on national TV is less about trolling traditionalists and more about chasing the audience that has been devouring country‑trap crossovers since “Old Town Road” blew open the gates.
How we got from Alan Jackson’s side‑eye to BigX’s spotlight
Country has been arguing with itself about pop and hip‑hop for decades. The Highwaymen were once seen as outlaws for pushing against polished Nashville in the 80s, even though their sound feels traditional by today’s standards. In the 90s and 2000s, Garth, Shania and the country‑pop wave reignited the same fight.
The 2016 Beyoncé and Dixie Chicks CMA performance was a flashpoint. Jackson’s reported walkout became shorthand for traditionalists who felt the show was abandoning its roots for ratings, and for critics who saw the backlash as coded discomfort with a Black woman stepping into a genre Black artists helped build but have rarely been allowed to own.
Yet while fans were fighting online, the music itself kept moving. Country‑rap – a fusion of country storytelling with hip‑hop beats and flows – has been taking shape since at least the late 90s, and it exploded into mainstream consciousness when Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” demolished streaming records in 2019. Country radio tried to keep that song at arm’s length. Streaming listeners did not care.
Since then, Nashville has slowly, awkwardly started catching up. Tracy Chapman becoming the first Black songwriter to win CMA Song of the Year in 2023 thanks to Luke Combs’ version of “Fast Car” signaled that the institution was finally willing to recognize a broader, more complicated lineage. Jelly Roll, a former Southern rapper, and Post Malone, a pop‑rapper turned country singer, now line CMA ballots and festival posters.
BigX sits squarely in that moment. In interviews he has described being shocked at how eager country gatekeepers were to pull him in, and he has already been honored by Billboard’s country arm as an “innovator” specifically for bringing his own twist to the genre rather than simply copying what is already on the charts. When a rapper who grew up on Texas rap and church music is getting country awards for innovation, it is no accident that the CMAs are willing to let him bring a rap verse to the main stage.
Is country‑rap actually country?
If you strip away the 808s and hi‑hats, what defines country music is not the accent but the ingredients: acoustic and electric guitars, pedal steel, fiddle, simple chord progressions and stories rooted in working‑class life and rural imagery. Country‑rap, at least in its better moments, simply bolts those pieces onto hip‑hop’s rhythmic backbone. The genre is literally defined as a blend of country music and hip‑hop style rapping.
“All the Way” and “Pray Hard” tick those boxes. Both lean heavily on guitar‑driven arrangements and heartbreak or faith‑soaked lyrics, with BigX’s verses riding over trap drums instead of brushed snare. Critics have described “All the Way” as a country breakup song with a trap‑style groove, and “Pray Hard” as a fusion of steel guitar and 808s that still feels like a spiritual barroom anthem.
You can absolutely decide you do not like the sound. Some reviewers argue that the glossy country‑rap wave, including BigX’s album, sacrifices emotional grit for algorithm‑friendly collaboration. But musically, it is hard to claim that these songs have less country DNA than, say, some of the slickest 90s hat‑act ballads that piled pop production on top of fiddle fills.
What this means if you grew up on “real” country
If your mental picture of the CMAs is Alan Jackson and George Strait singing “Murder on Music Row” or The Highwaymen growling about the road, BigXthaPlug rapping over trap drums at the same show can feel like a shock to the system. It is tempting to see it as proof that Nashville has finally lost the plot.
But zoom in on the details and the picture is more complicated. Under BigX’s flow, you still hear Telecasters, steel guitar and churchy backing vocals. The stories are about heartbreak, prayer, bad decisions and trying to do better. Those themes would not be out of place in a Jim Reeves or Merle Haggard song, even if the sonic armor around them is different.
In a strange way, BigX’s presence at the CMAs looks less like a betrayal of the past and more like a continuation of it. Country has always absorbed outside sounds: Western swing borrowed jazz, the Nashville Sound flirted with lush pop, outlaw country pulled in rock attitude. Now the outside sound just happens to be Southern hip‑hop.
So… why is a rapper rapping at the CMAs?
Because, like it or not, that is where a big slice of country’s audience is living now. They stream Morgan Wallen and 90s rap in the same playlist. They do not see a contradiction between a steel guitar and an 808. The CMAs can either pretend that world does not exist or put it on stage and hope to shape it.
BigXthaPlug’s “Pray Hard” moment is not a random stunt. It is the logical next chapter after Beyoncé’s controversial cameo, Tracy Chapman’s historic win, and years of underground country‑rap experimentation finally bursting into the mainstream. For better or worse, the question is no longer “Why is a rapper at the CMAs”. It is “What happens to country music now that he is not an outsider anymore”.
You can watch the performance on YouTube below:
