Words by Jacyln Marinese
March 14th, 2004

Hailing from rural LeGrange, Georgia, Bubba Sparxxx’s first album, Dark Days, Bright Nights gave him instant recognition when the song “Ugly” became a chart-topper. Soon though, when the video for that track came out, depicting what seemed to many like overly exaggerated images of southern country life, the media started writing the 27-year-old rapper off as a one hit wonder and a gimmick rapper. In response to all the criticism, the introspective Sparxxx decided to take some time off from the business to decide what his next steps would be. For Sparxxx, the video, though meant to entertain, was derived form very real aspects of his life, and he was frustrated about the response it was receiving. He felt it was time to add some more substance to his rhymes so that misconceptions about him could be dissolved and in 2003, released his sophomore album, Deliverance. With help from producer Timbaland, Deliverance aimed to add substance and detail to the images that drove his first album, and proved to be a success, garnering the young star additional national recognition.

With a casual flow accentuated by a lazy Southern drawl laid over the multi-levels of Timbaland’s production, Sparxxx truly comes off with a sound that gives new definition to Southern hip-hop. Borrowing slightly from the influences of his predecessors OutKast and Goodie Mob, Sparxxx’s sound is driven by mixes of country music harmonica, guitar and lyric samples. When cushioned between the gritty, hard-hitting, casual roll of Timbaland’s beats, Sparxxx words poetically tell his stories, wrapping Southern slang phrases around narratives about his youth, poverty, women and his own mortality.

Sparxxx’s sound has been treated unfairly by much of the media, having been labeled “hick-hop” in several publications. His sound may still be young, and it has definitely got a country feel, but that is what makes it unique. There is nothing hick-like about the fact that Sparxxx’s has taken the time to examine his path and now speaks candidly of his upbringing and about being accepting of where his roots lie. It is clear that he is not just throwing random ideas out there for the sake of rhyming. In fact, he seems to be searching for and maturing an identity for himself that, while indisputably aims to have a pop appeal, takes deeper steps by approaching the details of his life honestly. Currently, Sparxxx is working on his third album, Pure and ‘SUP had a chance to talk with him about the progressions that have been taking place in his career over the past few years. As you read, imagine Bubba’s slow and charming Southern drawl chatting steadily in your ear.

What kind of family do you come from? Do you have brothers and sisters?
I have two older brothers and two older sisters. I’m the youngest. I’m the runt of the litter.

Were they into music?
My one older brother who didn’t really grow up around me tries to say that he’s where I get my soul from, but I didn’t grow up around him. My other older brother listened to heavy metal and stuff like that and I hated that shit. And the only other music that was really around when I was young was country music and Southern rock, and I think that’s part of what lured me to hip-hop, just despisin’ all that. As I get older, and become more of a songwriter rather than just a rapper, I think I’ve developed more of an appreciation for country music, but I hated it growing up. I hated it. I didn’t buy a country CD until probably in the last two or three years.

A lot of the MCs started out rhyming in front of others at open mic events or ciphers with friends. Being so far out in the country, what were your outlets for hip-hop growing up?
There were no outlets for hip-hop. I was first exposed to hip-hop through my closest neighbor, Dwayne Hollingsworth. He was a black kid who lived periodically with his grandmother, which was like a mile down the road. He had a cousin from the East Coast somewhere who would send us tapes. I don’t think they were actually official mixtapes, but they were cassette tapes with a bunch of rap songs on ‘em and we’d listen to those tapes ’til literally the screws popped out. We would listen to it like it was the preacher’s sermon. I just really, really loved it. I don’t know. I can’t really put a finger on what exactly attracted me to it so much, but all I know is that I loved the fact that it was raw. It was no-holds-barred. It was always something like a tone of expression for me. ‘Cause like you said, I never had an open mic to go to or a block to go stand out on and cipher with six other cats. Nobody else around me rapped, so for me writing was much more of a reclusive thing. I would go up to my room late at night and sit down and vent and write about whatever was going on in my life. And that’s what it was to me and still is to me. I think the way it impacted a lot of other kids differently than it did me was that it never made me want to emulate anyone else; it always just made me want to use the vehicle to tell my story. I wanted people to understand what my life was about, what I went through too. That’s really what I enjoyed most about hip-hop was just listening to what other people had to say. At the time I really thought that if someone said something on a record that it was the truth. And if you hear me say something, it’s something that I’ve gone through. But as I got older I began to realize that a lot of people do embellish a lot of stuff. That’s not really that abnormal. I just always felt like that I was getting a look into someone’s life and what they were going through.

Where does your name come from?
Bubba in the South is like the word dude in California.

Does everyone call you that?
Well, not everybody.

Your mom?
My mama calls me Bubba sometimes – sometimes. You know what I mean? I was the youngest, so a lot of my relatives would call me Little Bubba from the time when I was young. I’d be out in the yard running around in a diaper, just like raising hell or whatever, and my mother would be like, ‘Little Bubba get your ass in the house, you need to get a bath,’ or whatever.

And Sparxxx?
Sparxxx, I just made that up. That’s kind of like the hip-hop side of it. That’s the balance, ’cause you know Bubba might be going a little too far left for hip-hop so I had to bring something hip-hop to balance it out. The three x’s represents a few different things. First of all, the unknown variable in math. You’ll never be able to figure out what my next move would be based on my previous move, you know? I’m a spontaneous person, with a real passion for the moment. I don’t even ever know what I’m gonna do next. And also I had a lot of relatives in the ’70s and ’80s, making their own moonshine. These days in the South kids are doing meth and smoking crack, but in the ’70s and ’80s running moonshine was a big business. In terms of moonshine, potency is represented by the three x’s. Like if there’s a batch that’s got those three x’s on it, you know it’s that gas.

When your album Dark Days, Bright Nights was released and the “Ugly” video came out, which some described as revealing stereotypical southern stereotypes, a lot of the media was calling you a one hit wonder. I know you’ve said that was a low point in your career. What were your thoughts during that period and how did you deal with all of that heavy criticism about the video and your music.
I had a near death experience in an a little single engine airplane. Me and my buddy misjudged how much fuel we had and we had to make an emergency landing. There were about 10 minutes where I thought we were going to die and all I could think about was the fact that if I died right now, the only thing people would have to remember me by would be that one album and that video. And I just made up my mind after that experience that on this album, I was going to make the album that I always hoped I’d have the balls enough to make if I had the chance enough to make an album. And I did it, for whatever it’s worth.

Do you think that the country images in that video were the reason that people came down on you so hard?
It probably is. The whole point of videos is to entertain. Everybody’s video is entertaining. Do people necessarily take everything they see in an Eminem video as literal? Or in Andre 3000’s video? Do people not recognize that a lot of what is done in those videos is entertainment? I mean obviously we did some things for theatrical effect, I mean I don’t go out and run around in a pigpen everyday, no I don’t. At the same time, every person you saw in that video was a real person with a real life. Those weren’t people we flew in from California, it was a real culture represented there. You know, I was talking to Angie Martinez on the radio up there, god bless her heart, and she asked me, ‘So, do people down there really have pigs for pets?’ I was like, ‘No. I got a lot of family members, friends and people I know that raise and slaughter pigs for a living. That’s what they do to survive. How do you think we get bacon and sausage?’ And at that moment it just dawned on her and she was like, ‘Ohhhh.’

What kind of farm did your family have?
Cows. We also had a catfish pond. We had a horse one time but my dad shot it because it threw my sister off and broke her pelvic bone.

On the other side of all of that, there are a lot of elements of your country image and style urban listeners were attracted to, so how do you account for that happening?
‘Cause it was real. A lot of people really felt like there was something very true to what was going on in there. I mean, no one is gonna do some shit like that just for the hell of it. That walk of life obviously means something to them if they’re gonna put themselves out there like that. At the same time I can’t project an image that’s not in line with who I am and where I come from. I think people just kinda recognized that it was real. And I hate that fuckin’ word ‘real.’ I hate it. That word has just been so distorted and overused. [Laughs] I can’t even use it in like non-hip-hop terms, like I can’t even use it when talking about ‘real tits or fake tits.’ I don’t even like to say the word ‘real.’ But I think people were just kind of like, ‘Man this dude is really keeping it… honest.’ [Laughs] He’s really keeping it honest to who he really is. At the same time I think a lot of people started to realize that the same shit goes on everywhere. For the first 10 years of my life I saw poverty first-hand, violence first-hand and the impact drug epidemics can have on a community and a family. The same shit goes on everywhere, period. I think that maybe that’s what I didn’t do a good enough job of on the first album, is really painting the picture of real life, and putting it in terms where people from New York or L.A. could really relate to it.

Was there a moment in your life that you would say was a major turning point for you?
Yeah. About a month before I ended up signing my record deal, me and a good friend of mine were in a pretty bad accident. I had to get a few stitches in my head. We flipped this Jeep Cherokee over like four or five times. We didn’t have seat belts on. We were pretty fucked up, like drinking and shit. It was a real eye-opener. We really should’ve been dead when looking at how bad of shape the car was. We ran off the road, went down a hill, and hit a big, huge, like three-foot tall tree stump. The back end of the car came up and it flipped over the stump end over end and it rolled a couple of times too. We landed upside down. That was a little miracle, and I mean that was rock bottom for me when that happened. That was just rock bottom. I was like man I’m just taking up space on this fucking planet. I’m not earning my life. I’m not earning the blessing of life. Like I’m just taking up fucking space. Something’s got to give. I’m either about to get on from this place or something’s really about to happen and I’m really about to turn this thing around. And surely enough a month later we put out an independent CD and started getting calls from the folks out here at Interscope and the rest is history.

You’ve had a few brushes with death and I notice that you reference God a lot. Do you consider yourself spiritual?
Yes, very spiritual. It’s sort of a cliché but I’m not religious, I’m spiritual. Because I just think that it’s very, very arrogant and typical of man to think that something would create us that allows us to grasp it that easily. That something would be the complete centerpiece of our existence and then we’d just be able to have all the explanations for it and know exactly what that being wants us to be and wants us to do. That’s an absurd notion. I just don’t pretend to understand it. I just believe that, at least in me, there’s a mechanism that goes off inside of me in my head or in my heart or whatever that tells me what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong. So I just always try to do right. I’m human. I’m flawed, but I always try to do the right thing and I always try to be a good person and let the rest take care of itself.

Do you have any kids?
No, I don’t have any kids.

Do you want to have any?
Yeah, absolutely. I’m actually ready to have kids right now, like right now, but I’m not ready to have a wife. But then at the same time I’m kind of a traditionalist so I don’t necessarily really just want to have a baby’s mama, either. You know what I’m sayin’ so I’m kinda just really torn because I don’t want to be 40 or 60 years old trying to be out in the yard playing with my kids. I want to have a child while I’m still young enough to be a real part of their lives while they’re growing up and to be active with them and so forth. But I’d say, I just turned 27 so by the time I’m 30 I’ll probably be married and have a kid. I mean that’s happiness to me. Because when I was growing up we moved around a lot, and we actually had a house and had a stable life towards the end of my high school years, but I lived in a lot of trailers and stuff like that. So I always wanted to have that stability, because that’s something that my parents always fought for. It kind of eluded them but thankfully we’re able to have that now. But it came hard, and it came with a very hard price, all that my life is now. But that’s definitely something I want for my children, just that stability. To have a house with a white picket fence and my wife, and take my kid to the little league baseball practice and have a dog. All that good stuff.

What did you do before the record deal?
Ahh, I’ve done every kind of job imaginable, illegal and legal. I sold weed, I dug ditches, I sold shoes, I cut grass, did construction work, did electrical work, worked fast food, Wendy’s and McDonalds. I’ve done a little bit of it all.

What could you have seen yourself doing if this record contract never happened for you?
Pretty much for everybody in the South, football is religion. Still to this day my number one love is football. My dream was to go to college and to get a degree in history education and teach high school history and coach football. That was like my dream, but obviously, financially, college was something that was tough to make happen. So I don’t know how realistic those expectations would’ve been. But um, pretty much everybody I knew growing up is either in jail, doing something illegal, or doing a manual labor job.

A lot of the media has called you the other white rapper to Eminem. How does that criticism affect your work?
It never really affects me. Eminem is great and transcends any racial barrier, and what I think of Eminem, I just think of him as a unique spirit. I don’t think of him as a white rapper, I don’t see Jay-Z as a black rapper. I just see all great people and great artists with unique spirits that transcend all of that stuff. That’s where I aim to be, and worrying about another man is not gonna get me there.

What’s it like working with Timbaland?
He’s the best. What can I say? He’s the best producer of any kind of music in the whole world.

What music are you listening to these days?
I like Maroon 5, I like the Darkness, I like Joss Stone. I really like Obie Trice’s album. I think that was slept on. He don’t get the credit he deserves. He kinda gets caught up in the hugeness of that label. But he really did a good job on his album.

What about OutKast?
Ummm, I appreciate what it is, you know? I appreciate the evolution of OutKast and where OutKast originated and how it’s grown into this beautiful thing for the world, but I’m an Outkast purist. I’m from Georgia, you know what I mean? Those cats are one of the main reasons I started rappin’. I like the older stuff.

What’s it been like going from a small town country guy to such a big name? How has it been handling the fame?
I definitely went through an adjustment period. It was tough for a while. You know, I’m not used to having any money. I’m not used to a lot of shit that my life became, but you know you just gotta go through and take your lumps and go through it. You reach a point where you really just settle down and realize that this is a job and all that other shit is just irrelevant. It’s just distraction and layers there to make you not focused and take your eyes off the prize. I’ll tell you this, my notoriety or whatever, goes way beyond my record sales. And I guess maybe that does partly come from being deemed the other white rapper or whatever. But my name recognition and my face recognition is ridiculous. You’d think I sold 10 million records, no shit.

What are the next steps for Bubba Sparxxx?
I’m starting another album titled Pure. I’m gonna keep making music and having fun as long as they keep paying me to do it, you know what I mean?

Why that title?
It’s purity, all things in life that are pure, you know what I mean. I’m gonna try to make a real pure album.

You refer to poverty a lot in your rhymes. What it was like growing up poor in the South? Can you describe what elements in your history are the things you draw from when you write?
Just being a youngster and there being a time when there were seven of us counting my parents and there being a plate with five fish sticks on it. You can remember stuff like that and you can just remember that feeling. Or just remembering the feeling that you weren’t able to have the things that you saw other people having, just the little extras, or even the essentials. I just remember a lot of times not being able to do what other kids were doing or what I wanted to do when I was young, and even when I was old. And that’s the main thing I draw on. I think that’s one thing that’s universal. Being poor is the same no matter where you’re at. I mean, the setting may be different, but it’s still all about trying to get something to eat, and trying to keep the heat on.