A tall, large and Caucasian man with a serious look and unshaven goatee, America’s redneck rapper Bubba Sparxxx may not fit the traditional rapper mold image-wise, but he sure can bust a rhyme like nobody’s business. Gracing the music scene in 2001 clad in overalls while driving a tractor in his video for “Ugly,” Sparxxx has since extinguished any speculation that either his music or image is a laughing matter. The confident rapper has come a long way from his home in LaGrange, Georgia, but his roots as a southern boy have not eluded him and have certainly not abandoned him.Growing up, Warren Anderson Mathis lived a somewhat sheltered life, residing off a rural dirt road in the Deep South. He became inspired by early-‘90s gangsta rap after a neighbor introduced him to rap mixes mailed from New York, and when his high school football career dead-ended alongside college hopes, Mathis (a.k.a. Sparxxx) began to stare rapping in the eye for the first time. Though he had written rhymes at age 15 and often had rap-offs with other school mates, Sparxxx had never fully explored his options with a musical career until listening to 2 Live Crew, which inspired him to start. Shannon Houchins, a staff producer for Jermaine Dupri’s Atlanta-based So So Def label, discovered Sparxxx and created the group One Card Shi. The group didn’t last, but it was Sparxxx’s ticket to solo success.The album Dark Days, Bright Nights was Sparxxx’s first solo release under his own Nocents Records, and he soon thereafter began working in conjunction with superstar Timbaland, releasing his hit song “Ugly.” The Interscope version of Dark Days, Bright Nights landed at number three on the Billboard Charts, but after Sparxxx’s follow-up album Deliverance in 2003 fared only sub-par, he switched to Outkast member Big Boi’s record Purple Ribbon and released his third album The Charm in 2006.