Justin Champagne

Born and raised in south Louisiana, Justin Champagne makes genre-bending music rooted in the sounds, stories, and swampy swagger of his home turf. It's a soundtrack for Louisiana's small towns and muddy backroads — a gumbo of hip-hop, country, hook-heavy pop, and hard rock, glued together by a hometown hero who raps and sings not only about his own experience, but also about the country lifestyles of his neighbors in the Deep South and beyond. Everything changed in 2016, when Justin Champagne wrote "Sun Goes Down." A breakup anthem filled with hip-hop beats, countrified guitar riffs, soaring vocal hooks, and rhythmic rapping, "Sun Goes Down" was the first song to embrace the full range of Justin's musical tastes. By combining a variety of different sounds together, he created something new: a boundary-breaking genre that showcased not only the depth of his influences, but also his versatility as a songwriter, storyteller, vocalist, and rapper. Unsurprisingly, the song became a hit, earning more than a million listens on Spotify and laying the foundation for a unique, trendsetting career. "Why do people need to stick to just one genre?" Justin asks. "I want to do it all at once, writing country songs with pop hooks where I can rap. I just put everything into one big pot and start cooking. People call it 'country-rap,' but it's just music, man. I wouldn't want to call it anything else."