Dallas rapper BigXthaPlug came up as a regional underground rapper. He's not that anymore. BigX has been rapping since the late '00s, and he's been on this website's radar since 2022, when his twangy home-state anthem "Texas" made our songs-of-the-week countdown. BigX's country rap tunes effortlessly absorb actual country music into their slow-crawl Southern rap swamp, which makes him a figure uniquely suited to this moment. In his Pitchfork piece on the first Coachella weekend, Paul A. Thompson opens with a scene of BigX, in his debut at the fest, performing in an overflowing tent with a too-low mic -- a sure sign that someone is exploding in popularity. Sure enough, BigX now has a top-10 hit and a late-night TV performance under his belt.
BigX has been steadily leveling up for a couple of years, and I was a little mystified why he didn't make an appearance on Cowboy Carter last year. He's equally comfortable working with Jessie Murph and That Mexican OT, and he operates outside the major-label system, with his music coming out through UnitedMasters distribution. Earlier this month, BigX released the breakup song "All The Way," a collaboration with the young country star Bailey Zimmerman. I think it works pretty well. Last week, "All The Way" debuted at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100, which means that it immediately became the biggest hit for either BigX or Zimmerman. (It's at #8 this week.)
On Tuesday night, BigX gave his first-ever late-night performance. With a live band behind him, he did a medley of two of his viral singles, the War-sampling "The Largest" and the Whispers-sampling "Mmhmm." It's one thing for a bigger guy to be shirtless in music videos, but it's entirely another to walk into a TV studio and give the world a good, long look at your gut. You have to admire the confidence. Check out the performance, and BigX gifting Kimmel a $100k chain, below.
The deluxe edition of BigXthaPlug's album Take Care, which has nothing to do with Drake's Take Care, is out now on UnitedMasters.
