Gangstagrass
Gangstagrass is a Brooklyn-based group that combines bluegrass playing and singing with hip-hop beats and rapping, founded and led by the producer, singer and guitarist Rench (Oscar Owens). Its “Long Hard Times to Come” became the opening theme of the FX series Justified in 2010 and was nominated for an Emmy, and its 2020 album No Time for Enemies reached number one on the Billboard bluegrass albums chart, the first album by a group with rappers to do so.
Rench started the project on his own around 2006, while making beats and producing for local hip-hop groups; when no one else would take up his idea of adding fiddle or pedal steel to the tracks, he did it himself. The recordings drew attention on blogs and as downloads, and FX asked to use one of his songs in a commercial for Justified; “Long Hard Times to Come” was then chosen as the show’s theme when it began in early 2010. On 8 July 2010 Rench and the rapper Jason Keaton (T.O.N.E-z) were nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music. The first full-length album, Lightning on the Strings, Thunder on the Mic, featuring T.O.N.E-z, came out in 2010, followed by Rappalachia (2012), with several different rappers, and Broken Hearts and Stolen Money (2014), which ended with a hidden version of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”
The attention from Justified led Rench to build a steady touring band, which took some changes to settle. American Music (2015) spent several weeks in the top ten of the Billboard bluegrass albums chart, as did the live album Pocket Full of Fire (2019), recorded at shows around the country in 2018. Since 2018 the lineup has been Rench on vocals, guitar and beats, the MCs Dolio the Sleuth and R-Son the Voice of Reason, Dan “Danjo” Whitener on banjo and vocals, and Brian “B.E.” Farrow on fiddle and vocals. On 12 September 2019 they played the Station Inn in Nashville, the first time rappers had performed at the bluegrass club.
No Time for Enemies, the band’s fifth studio album, came out on 14 August 2020. Only three songs had been recorded together in the studio before the COVID-19 lockdowns; the other eight were recorded by each member at home and assembled by Rench, and one, “Do Better,” was built up night by night in the band’s livestreams. Its eleven songs dealt with race and freedom and closed with “Your Land,” a reworking of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” with the singer Branjae. The album topped the Billboard bluegrass chart that September. In 2021 the band auditioned for the sixteenth season of America’s Got Talent and reached the quarter-finals, and in 2022 it resumed full touring and released a holiday album, Sugarplums and Whiskey.
