Yung Gravy Reveals Wild Country Album: ‘It Was Going To Be An EP But I Got Too Inspired’

Yung Gravy is joining the ever-growing list of artists pivoting into country music, confirming in a new interview that his first album of cowboy bangers has been completed.

The revelation came in a chat he had with Purple Sneakers last Friday (June 28), ahead of his upcoming Australian tour with Baby Gravy (his collaborative project with fellow rapper bbno$). The full interview will be published in the coming weeks, however early on in our Zoom call, Gravy flagged that he’d handed in the final masters for the album that morning, alongside its cover art and tracklisting.

• Yung Gravy And bbno$ Hit A New Peak With ‘GOAT’ Third Mixtape: ‘It’s The Most Fire Of All Of Our Shit'

It coincided with the release of the album’s second single, Lone Ranger, following up on the Shania Twain-assisted White Claw from earlier in June. Gravy stopped short of revealing the album’s title, but noted that it is indeed pegged for release before the end of 2024.

Touching on the new album’s origins, Gravy explained to Purple Sneakers that he was drawn to a new style of music after growing tired of the retro-flavoured hip-hop style he’s been working with for much of the past decade. “I’ve been making the same kind of music for my whole career, and I was kind of running out of steam,” he admitted. “I would get beats sent to me but I would never hear something original or new to me.”

Gravy was eventually introduced to the world of country music after he “befriended a lot of people in country” – particularly shouting out HARDY and Shania Twain, the latter of whom he said he “got pretty close with”. He expounded: “I would just hang out with them and listen more and more to country music, and at one point I just decided to try some stuff out. I was just going to make an EP, but I got too inspired – my producer and I got really into it and made a 14 song album.”

Unfortunately for those of us hoping HARDY might appear on the album, that won’t be the case – although Gravy noted that he could “potentially be on the deluxe [edition]”. As for the artists that will have guest spots on the album, Gravy revealed that Zach Bryan cameos on one track, while another features Juicy J. Gravy teased that he has even more collaborations in the bag, but couldn’t talk about them on the record.

He also acknowledged that some of his fans are “concerned” about the major shift in sound from Gravy’s earlier releases, but they shouldn’t worry too much: “It’s not just a country album,” he clarified, saying it’s more like “a Gravy album with some country mixed in” and that “the songs I’ve released so far are more country than the whole thing is”.

As for his landmark collab with Shania Twain, Gravy quipped that she was “definitely the most successful artist I've ever even met”, flagging that he and the Come On Over icon “actually have some really good chemistry”. He explained: “We had a studio session that we booked in for eight hours, and people were coming in and out the whole time – her husband and my homies and everything – but her and I stayed in there for 13 hours straight. We just kept extending the session, and we made eight songs together, all in that one session.”

Part of how they made so many songs together came down to their shared inexperience on the production side: “[Twain] can play the guitar and piano,” Gravy added, “but she can't use a DAW to produce – and I can barely get a beat down, so we couldn’t actually make a song [as] just the two of us. So we were, like, coming up with all of these ideas and just waiting for people to come in and lay ‘em down for us. It was cute.”

Gravy wasn’t able to confirm whether more of the music he made with Twain would see the light of day – one additional song “got cut off the album at the last minute, I think because she wants it on her [own next album]”, while the other six would require the pair “to get in the studio again to really cook ‘em up”.

Whenever it arrives, Gravy’s as-yet-untitled country album will serve as his fourth full-length solo effort, following up on 2022’s Marvelous. He also released Baby Gravy 3 alongside bbno$ last August, with their Australian tour in support of it kicking off later this month – head here for more info on that.