Let's be honest, southern farmboy hip-hop isn't immediately the most appetising prospect. The idea of such a determinedly urban music adopting country manners reeks of novelty; how can the sounds of the porch compete with those of the projects? A dumb joke perpetuated by desperate men in search of a gimmick, surely?
Well, not quite. The entrepreneur launching Bubba Sparxxx is none other than Timbaland, the world's most creative producer. Sparxxx is the first signing to Timbaland's own label, Beat Club, and the grateful recipient of rhythms that rank alongside Tim's best this year (Missy's 'Get Ur Freak On', Aaliyah's 'We Need A Resolution', Jay-Z's 'Hola Hovito'). So far, so fine.
Oh, and there's the rapper himself. Bubba Sparxxx is, in fact, a 24-year-old former school gridiron star called Warren Anderson Mathis. Mathis - based in Athens, Georgia - is emphatically not Beat Club's token white boy for the Eminem market. Sure, he exaggerates the good ol' southern boy persona at times, but there's no doubting his skills as a rapper.
'Dark Days, Bright Nights', then, is a late challenger for rap debut of the year. You've doubtless heard the invigoratingly silly, Missy-sampling single 'Ugly' by now. What's most impressive is the way Sparxxx and his producers maintain that imaginative party atmosphere throughout. Obviously, Tim's contributions (nearly half of the album) are the most striking, as he threads acoustic guitars through his trademark eastern-tinged beats on 'Open Wide' and the horse-sampling 'Bubba Talk', or unleashes the kind of twanging funk on 'Lovely' that made Missy's 'Dog N' Heat' so thrilling.
Nevertheless, Atlantan Shannon Houchins' work stands its ground well, and there's an outstanding dirty south groove on 'All The Same' courtesy of Outkast's production team, Organized Noise. Eminem comparisons are rarely apposite save, perhaps, Bubba's idea of distributing sheets of acid with the album on 'Infected'. But he's a smart, funny character in his own right, and Beat Club couldn't have hoped for a more auspicious launch.
