Gangstagrass is a multi-racial collective of musicians who demolish every preconception you have about
country music and hip-hop music. These string pickers and MCs create a shared cultural space for dialogue
and connection between folks that usually never intersect. The boundaries are gone and Gangstagrass is out
there doing things nobody thought would work but when you hear it you know, down in your soul, that it
does work. Gangstagrass is here to help us party together with an irresistible blend of America's rural and
urban music traditions.
Integrating banjo and fiddle with hip-hop beats and rapping may be something Gangstagrass does for the
love of the music, but it has led them to face a history of racialized genres and deeply ingrained sense of
cultural incompatibility. Creating music that turns what some would consider opposite musical styles into a
rollicking party that suddenly makes sense, they found a byproduct of their disregard for traditional sense of
genre was that they got people who normally would consider themselves to have nothing in common
dancing to the same beat. Forget everything you thought you knew about our cultural divisions: when
Gangstagrass starts playing, those preconceptions are relegated to the dustbin of history. Banjo and fiddle
seamlessly meet verbal acrobatics from skilled MCs. High lonesome harmonies flow over block-rockin’
beats.
“There are a lot more people out there with Jay-Z and Johnny Cash on their playlists than you think,” says
Gangstagrass Mastermind Rench, who had previously made a name for himself as an in-demand Brooklyn
country and hip-hop producer and singer/songwriter. He should know – he’s toured the country and abroad
with a band of bluegrass pickers and hip-hop MCs to the delight of standing-room crowds everywhere.
Initially known for the Emmy-nominated theme song to the hit FX Network show “Justified”, the band has
become a formidable force in live performance, touring extensively in the USA, Canada, and Europe.
When the band’s fifth studio album No Time For Enemies was released in 2020, Americana Highways
proclaimed Gangstagrass “America’s Band” because they take so much of what’s amazing about this country
-- the ingenuity, creativity, the strength and struggles of such different people to forge a path into the
unknown -- and distill it into a message of common ground and unity across differences. The album quickly
rose to #1 on the Billboard bluegrass chart, the first time in history that hip-hop MCs achieved that top spot.
More recently, between appearances on America’s Got Talent and PBS’s The Caverns Sessions that made
everyone's highlights list, and a glowing full-page article in the New York Times print edition headlined “This
Is the Music America Needs,” the band is geared up to get us all dancing on common ground for their
national and international tours and their forthcoming full-length album release in the summer of 2024