Rise to Fame
Two decades of rap mixtapes sold from the trunk of his car didn't make him famous. A ballad about hitting rock bottom did. Save Me (2020) started as an acoustic experiment, climbed to 200 million YouTube views, and pulled him from the Southern rap underground into mainstream country. The pivot worked because his voice and his story fit the genre: two prison stints, reportedly around 40 arrests, and a confessional style that treats his criminal past as autobiography, not content.
In the Spotlight
Three Grammy wins at the 2026 ceremony and a number-one album on the all-genre Billboard 200 put him in the territory of mainstream country's biggest acts. Beautifully Broken pulled hip-hop and contemporary Christian music alongside traditional country in a way country radio usually resists. In December 2025, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee pardoned him, restoring his right to vote after years of felony restrictions. The pardon came roughly 17 years after his last prison release, which says something about both country music and American second chances.
Side Notes
Learning he'd become a father from inside a prison cell in 2008 was the turn. He met his daughter Bailee for the first time on her second birthday. In 2022, he donated $250,000 to build a recording studio inside Davidson County Juvenile Detention Center, the same facility that held him as a teenager. His wife, Bunnie Xo, is a podcaster with her own substantial following, and both of them have built their public persona around the same unconventional backstory: it's all usable material.