Bartees Strange

Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond · Oct 11, 2022 · 52m · transcript

Bartees Strange is an amalgamation of musical styles. Listen to any given song on his newest release, Farm To Table, and you can hear hints of early aughts emo, auto-tuned hip-hop vocals, and country blues—all housed in an indie rock veneer. Bartees wide-reaching sound makes perfect sense given his Midwest upbringing and early influences. He was raised in Mustang, Oklahoma as one of the few Black kids in an area rife with racial violence. As a teenager he discovered Christian hardcore punk and for the first time he felt at home in a scene that embraced outsiders of all kinds.

After graduating…