Edited by Azizi Powell
This post is showcases the song "Playing Chicken with the Train" by African American country rapper and songwriter Cowboy Troy. Information about Cowboy Troy is included in this post along with information about the song "Playing Chicken with the Train Cowboy", and a video and lyrics for that song.
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2016/05/roots-of-african-american-braggadocio.html for a companion pancocojams post that presents excerpts from the article "Playing Chicken with the Train Cowboy: Troy's Hick-Hop and the Transracial Country West" by Adam Gussow, in Southern Cultures: Winter 2010, Volume 16: Number 4, edited by Harry L. Watson, and Jocelyn Neallyn Neal [Google books].
This post is presented for cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Cowboy Troy and all others who are featured in this embedded video. Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the
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INFORMATION ABOUT COWBOY TROY
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_Troy
"Troy Lee Coleman III (born December 18, 1970), better known by his stage name Cowboy Troy, is an [African]* American country rapper and songwriter. He is a member of the MuzikMafia, an aggregation of country music singer-songwriters whose membership also includes Big & Rich, Gretchen Wilson and James Otto. He has released four studio albums and one EP, including two releases on Warner Bros. Records, and has charted twice on the Billboard country singles charts.
Biography
Troy graduated from Skyline High School in the Dallas Independent School District. He then attended the University of Texas at Austin where he earned a bachelor's degree.[2] Prior to beginning his career as a singer, he worked as the assistant manager of a Dallas area Foot Locker.[2]
He got the name Cowboy Troy in college, after a friend used the name to distinguish the cowboy-hat-wearing Coleman from his other friends named Troy.[3]
Career
On May 17, 2005, Troy released his first major-label solo album, Loco Motive, through the RAYBAW records production label and the Warner Music Group distribution label.[4] The album debuted at No. 2 on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart. The first single, "I Play Chicken with the Train," peaked at No. 48 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart on April 9, 2005 and was the No. 1 country download at the iTunes Music Store on April 15, 2005."....
-snip-
*I added this word "African" to this Wikipedia article.
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INFORMATION ABOUT THE COUNTRY-RAP SONG "I PLAY CHICKEN WITH THE TRAIN"
From https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-243121243/playing-chicken-with-the-train-cowboy-troy-s-hick-hop Playing Chicken with the Train Cowboy Troy's Hick-Hop and the Transracial Country West
By Gussow, Adam
"BLACK HILLBILLIES AND BLACKNECKS
There was no necessary reason why Cowboy Troy's country-rap single, "I Play Chicken With the Train," should have caused such an uproar among country music fans when it was released in the spring of 2005. The song itself is a sonic Rorschach test: not so singular a curiosity as many might think, but still a challenge to what passes for common knowledge in the music business. It is animated by a sound and a lyric stance that might strike us, in a receptive mood, as uncanny--at once unfamiliar, a half-and-half blend of two musical idioms that rarely find themselves so jarringly conflated, and strangely familiar, as though the song has distilled the sound of ten-year-old boys filled with limitless bravado, jumping up and down and hollering into the summer afternoon.
Compared with other country-rap hybrids, "I Play Chicken With the Train" contains surprisingly few sonic signifiers of hip-hop: no breakbeats, no samples, no drum machines, no scratching. The full burden of audible blackness is carried by Cowboy Troy's decidedly old-school rap, with its square phrasing, tame syncopations, and echoes of Run-DMC. One hears white voices framing, doubling, responding to, supporting, that black voice; simultaneously, one senses that somebody has torn down the wall that is supposed to demarcate firmly the boundary between twanging redneck euphoria--the lynch-mob's fiddle-driven rebel yell--and rap's exaggerated self-projections of urban black masculinity?....
The email blast that alerted potential purchasers to the recording's release fused a kind of King-Kong sensationalism with an assertion of scandalous, unprecedented hybridity: Cowboy Troy, we were informed, is "the world's only six-foot, five-inch, 250-pound black cowboy rapper." Was that a threat, a brag, or a promise? (3)"
-snip-
This excerpt is reformatted for this post.
"Blacknecks" is a referent that may have been coined just for this song. "Blacknecks" refers to 'country' Black folks and is the equivalent of the sometimes considered pejorative referent "rednecks" (i.e. - 'country' White folks).
"Playing chicken with the train" means to show your fearlessness by stand on the train tracks and jumping quickly jumping aside when a train is almost in front of you. Needless to say, "playing chicken with the train" is a very dangerous and foolish thing to do.
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LYRICS: "I PLAY CHICKEN WITH THE TRAIN"
(composed by Troy Lee Coleman III)
(performance by Cowboy Troy featuring Big & Rich*)
[Chorus - Big & Rich]
I play chicken with the train
Play chicken with the train train
Unh huh huh unh huh huh
You know that I play chicken with the train
Play chicken with the train train
Unh huh huh unh huh huh yeah
[Verse 1 - Cowboy Troy]
Hold 'em up! Here we go!
All the hicks and chicks feel the flow
Big black train comin 'round the bend
Gwone kinfolk tell ya mamanem
Chug-a-lugga, chug-a-lugga, chug-a-lugga who?
The big blackneck comin' through to you
Boy you done fell and bumped your head
Uh huh that's what they said
People said it's impossible,
Not probable, too radical
But I already been on the CMA's
Hell Tim McGraw said he like the change
And he likes the way my hick-hop sounds
And the way the crowd screams when I stomp the ground
I'm big and black, clickety-clack
And I make the train jump the track like that
[Repeat Chorus]
[Verse 2 - Cowboy Troy]
From mic to cassette deep into your ear
My voice is your choice that you wanted to hear
Southern boy makin' noise where the buffalo roam
Flesh, denim and bone as you might have known
See me ridin' into town like a desperado
With a big belt buckle, the cowboy bravado
All over the world wide web you'll see
Download CBT on an mp3
Speak clearly what I'm sayin' so you'll comprehend
Hit the net for hick-hop radio, tune in
Rollin' like thunder on the scene
It's kinda hard to describe if you know what I mean
I never claimed to be the hardest of the roughest hard rocks
But I'm boomin' out yo' box
Skills got you jumpin' outch'a socks
From Texas here I come, movin' yo body with a bass kick drum!
[Repeat Chorus]
[Cowboy Troy]
I play chicken with the train
Play chicken with the train train
Unh huh huh unh huh huh
I play chicken with the train
Play chicken with the train train
[Big & Rich]
Unh huh huh unh huh huh you know that
[Repeat Chorus]
[Cowboy Troy]
Huh!
Yeah!
One time!
Get you some of that!
Source: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/cowboytroy/iplaychickenwiththetrain.html
*"Big & Rich are an [Anglo] American country music duo composed of Big Kenny and John Rich, both of whom are songwriters, vocalists, and guitarists." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_%26_Rich
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SHOWCASE VIDEO: I Play Chicken With The Train
Warner Bros. Records, Uploaded on Oct 26, 2009
© 2006 WMG
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