Keith Whitley… but make it rap?
Fans were correct in noticing that Morgan Wallen has a song that’s a nod to the late, great Keith Whitely on his forthcoming I’m The Problem album, but they probably didn’t expect it to be completely redone into a rap style song.
Over the weekend, Morgan was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. And while most of the attention has been on his awkward exit at the end of the show, the country music superstar also used his performance to tease some of the tracklist from his upcoming album I’m The Problem.
Fans noticed that track 35, “Miami,” was registered with ASCAP (which controls the publishing rights of songs) as having eight songwriters: Hank Cochran, Dean Dillon, Richard McGill, Blake Pendergrass, Royce Porter, Ernest, Ryan Vojtesak, and Morgan. Obviously Hank, Dean and Royce were the writers from the Keith Whitley classic “Miami, My Amy,” released in January 1986 as the second single from his album L.A. To Miami.
So they obviously interpolated part of the song for this new one in some way, and while Whitley’s family has had high praise for Morgan in the past (he has another Whitley-inspired song called “Keith Whitley” on his One Thing at a Time album), it will be interesting to hear what they think about this, because it’s not really just a sample… Morgan used it to make a whole rap style song which I imagine will be quite different from Whitley’s original, obviously.
Morgan appeared as a guest on Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast, where he of course talked about the new music he has coming, specifically telling Theo that he had tried to get rapper BigXthaPlug on “Miami,” but he never heard back from him, though BigX has been talking about his own “country” music and working with Morgan, so maybe they have something else in the works? Who knows…
But I have a feeling a lot of country music fans are probably not gonna love whatever this is:
“I got a song on my record called ‘Miami.’ It’s a Keith Whitley flip… that’s one of his bigger songs, I guess. But we flipped it and turned it into more of a rap style. But it’s cool, I like it.
It seemed like it could use rapper on there, but I didn’t end up using a feature, we ended up just making a second verse. But it’s one of those songs that it wouldn’t be surprising if we got a remix and did that once it’s out.”
Morgan is no stranger to trap beats and rap influences in his music, but he also told Theo he wanted to tone that down for this project… but not on “Miami,” it seems. I’m not the biggest fan of all of Morgan’s music, but I like some of his songs and you obviously can’t really go anywhere without hearing them these days, and they’re certainly catchy, I’ll give him that.
But I just can’t see myself loving a rap style “Miami, My Amy.” That’s where I officially draw the line…
He’s correct in saying that it’s a classic, though, and if you’ve (somehow) never heard it before, today is your lucky day:
“Miami, My Amy”
You can watch that part of the podcast here:
Actually, “Keith Whitley” was one of my favorite songs off this record, so I think I’ll just stick with this…
