Bubba Sparxxx and FlowEz Mr. Billups

For reasons best known to himself, Warren Anderson Mathis chooses to go by the frankly ridiculous alternative moniker of Bubba Sparxxx when he’s recording and performing hip hop, but it doesn’t seem as if the general public have held it against him down the years; over the course of a career that, in earnest, has now spanned more than two decades, Sparxxx has enjoyed top ten success on the U.S. singles charts with ‘Ms. New Booty’, which reached number seven, as well as receiving significant radio play with tracks like ‘Deliverance’ and ‘Ugly’, too. To his credit, he’s put a genuinely fresh spin on the kind of southern hip hop sound that seemed to really take off in the early to mid noughties with the likes of Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Chamillionaire and Mike Jones, and brings an energy to his live shows that is visceral in quality; whilst his lyrics aren’t always entirely serious, there’s an aggression in Sparxxx’s delivery that certainly appears to demand he be taken seriously. His latest album, Made on McCosh Hill Road, dropped just this June, so expect worldwide tour dates to follow sooner than later - Sparxxx is certainly well overdue a return to the UK.