For a few years in the early 2000s, Bubba Sparxxx and football were a natural pairing. “Back In The Mud” off the Deliverance album was prominently featured in Madden 2004, and the song was used in ESPN’s College GameDay for two seasons. You still can’t go to a high school or college football game without hearing “We Ready,” the song Sparxxx was featured on by Archie Eversole.
Sparxxx played football in high school at Troup County along with his good friend Steve Herndon, who played at Georgia and had a short career in the NFL. He followed Herndon up to Athens and lived there as his career was taking off, having his release party for his debut album Dark Days, Bright Nights in the college town.
UPROXX Sports caught up with Sparxxx, who is still touring and recently released his latest album with Jawga Sparxxx entitled Muddy Days Drunken Nights.
Sparxxx talked Madden, his playing career, his SEC fanhood, and more.
Martin Rickman: When I saw you retweet the Madden Soundtracks piece, I really wanted to get the chance to talk to you about the game and the song.
Bubba Sparxxx: It’s amazing how much mileage I got out of that song and the Madden deal. Obviously to this day people still come up to me because of Madden and Def Jam: Fight For NY. Somebody probably once a month mentions one of the two. And obviously the College GameDay experience with “Back In The Mud” also. It had some legs. To be a song that actually “failed” at radio. It was a brick. It was the number one record in New Zealand and I think top 10 in Australia, but other than that, in the States it didn’t really perform. But we still got some mileage out of it for sure.
What were your days as a player like for you?
Honestly, man, my best friend was a guy by the name of Steven Herndon. Our relationship’s pretty well documented. The year we were seniors, he was one of the top 100 high school players in the country. He was a “five-star” recruit. Me and pretty much everybody else on that team, the truth is, I was just a good high school football player. Granted, Georgia high school football is elite. The level of play, and we were in the highest level of classification. It was real ball. It was legit. But being in his shadow, I had opportunities, but I didn’t really feel like that was what my long term path was going to be about. I ended up living vicariously through him. He ended up going to the University of Georgia and being All-SEC and playing in the NFL. Truth be told, what was always neat about that experience is, I actually had more of a passion for football, and he probably had more of a passion for music. It was cool because both ended up living vicariously through each other.
Did Steve get you started on liking that genre of music?
I think we both already had an affinity for hip hop by the time we met each other in eighth grade. It was fifth or sixth grade when I started. My closest neighbor, which isn’t saying much because he lived 3/4 of a mile away from me, he had a cousin from the Eastern Seaboard. Could’ve been anywhere from Baltimore to Boston, I don’t know, somewhere up there. He’d send cassette tapes from the one hour a night when stations would play rap back in those days. He’d send us those tapes, and we’d listen to them. That was my first exposure to hip hop. I had another friend who was really tuned into the Miami bass scene, 2 Live Crew and all that stuff. I got exposure there. When I really, really fell in love with hip hop as a fan was when N.W.A. hit the scene, Eazy-E, Too $hort, when West Coast rap came to the forefront. As far as starting believing that maybe I had a place in hip hop, or I could carve out a place, it was when I heard OutKast.
How did the Madden opportunity come about? Did they reach out to you?
We were getting ready to put out the Deliverance album. It might have been my product manager, Christian Clancy, who ironically is Tyler The Creator’s manager now. They were looking for different ways to market and tag songs and get looks for songs. They were just putting together the whole Madden thing. When we recorded the song, we thought it was a natural fit for football and football-related stuff, and we started pitching in that direction. I think that was how the GameDay thing and the Madden thing came to be.
Any memories of filming that video?
It was really cool to meet [former Georgia running back and two-time Pro Bowler] Garrison Hearst. He was actually in the video. Brandon Lloyd was also in the video. There were a few different players that I had grown up watching, and that was cool. It was a contractual deal and certain players had to do a certain number of appearances for NFL-related events, and the video was basically sponsored in part at least by the NFL in coordination with the Madden game and all that. I just remember it being super hot and me being really hungover that day.
If I had one memory of the video, it had been to the point where the director Bryan Barber [who also directed a bunch of OutKast videos], God bless him, he was like, ‘Man I’ve got a stunt double if you want to just sit here and chill out for a little bit. Drink some water and hang out. I’ve got a stunt double for the scenes where you’ve got full pads.’ I was a big boy in those days, but the guy who’s supposed to be Bubba Sparxxx running around in the pads is a little bit bigger than me, and I always remember being annoyed by that moving forward. I was like, God I should’ve gotten my ass up and did it.
You obviously still follow the game because it seems like every day you’re tweeting something about the SEC.
I’m a Georgia Bulldogs fan, man, all sports and the university. But it’s kind of a weird story with that deal because I grew up a diehard Alabama fan in all sports. My dad was a huge Bear Bryant fan as most Southern men were in that era he grew up in, the ’60s and ’70s. Growing up, I was a Gump. A crazy Alabama fan. It was the weirdest thing. When my best friend went to Georgia, it was gradual, but at the start of his career, I thought I’d pull for Georgia every game except for when they played Alabama. By the end of his career, he played there five years, I was a diehard Georgia fan. The transition didn’t register on whatever emotional level in basketball. So ironically enough, crazy enough, I’m still an Alabama basketball fan and a Georgia football fan. I probably support Georgia more in all sports, but I’ve got love for Bama too. I grew up four miles from the Alabama line.
Any thoughts on that Alabama basketball hire?
They’re spending the major coin that a lot of people didn’t think they’d spend, so they’re going to get somebody. If they’re paying $4 million a year, they’re going to get somebody. The University of Alabama has one of the most successful all-around athletic departments in the country, and I think it’s just the next stage in the overall commitment. You’re going to see it more and more in men’s basketball because it generates revenue. It’s the sport, aside from football, that not only pays for itself and sustains itself but also makes a profit and pays for other programs. It’s pretty important that you have a good hoops team, especially when they’re about to redo that TV contract. That’s going to be huge, and everybody’s going to want a piece of it.
With Georgia and all the Gurley stuff, where’d you fall on that?
I followed it super closely. There was no question it kept them from winning the East. It was more than just his production on the field. He was a spiritual leader. I dunno. He broke a rule, that’s the bottom line. If we want to get into whether that rule should exist, well no. And obviously anybody with half a brain I don’t see how you could say that rule should exist. How anybody shouldn’t be able to sign their own name and profit from it is just an absurd notion and always has been. But especially with the money that’s generated by those guys today. It just is what it is. He did a lot for Georgia, he’s a great player. He’s going to do awesome in the NFL. I hear his rehab is going great on his knee, way ahead of schedule. Now we’re looking at 2015, and it’s all about Nick Chubb.
Do you like that a lot of your music has been associated with sporting events and football?
I like it. I like that I was a part of the “We Ready” song with Archie Eversole that still gets played in stadiums and arenas. Obviously the journey with “Back In The Mud.” I love it. At the end of the day I love sports, so it’s special to me in that way. It’s also another way to reach a lot of people.
Do you think that had YouTube been around, Twitter been around, that the Deliverance album would’ve probably gotten more traction?
There’s no question. Deliverance would’ve gone multi-platinum had it come out the way it’s structured now. If you had a way to directly reach the fans and consumers. It’s so important, the ability to do that. Back in those days it was so archaic. Once I got into the “Ms. New Booty” era, that was like the beginning of downloads and all that and people selling music that way and being able to reach people that way, but back in 2003, it was still go to radio, try to get the video on MTV. The fact is, there was just no radio format [for me]. The song “Deliverance” still went top 10 in rhythmic and top 20 in pop. That was just Interscope’s brute force and ability to spend money and leverage things, but there was just no radio format for the whole thing.
Did you play Madden, too? Were you Falcons all the way?
As surprising as it might be, I never really played video games period. I checked out of video games on like Super Nintendo maybe. Tecmo Bowl and Double Dribble. That was my era. I played some Playstation 2, but really it was like, I grew up way out in the country and whenever I played video games it was because it was raining and I couldn’t go outside and I didn’t have any friends to hang out with because I did grow up isolated for the most part. I would play video games then. Once I got old enough to go and experience the world and be a part of it, I didn’t see a use for it. But all my friends are insane gamers.
What was your coolest sports experience as a player or a fan?
As a player it would’ve been in high school. I’m from LaGrange, Georgia. When I was in high school there were two high schools, Troupe County and LaGrange. Troupe County, where I went, was the red-headed stepchild. La Grange was the historical power. They had just won in 1991 the state and national USA Today mythical championship, going 15-0. The next year, we had been in different classifications. In 1992, I was a sophomore and we played them for the first time in 20 years. They were undefeated. It was the last game of the year. We had lost once that year. And we beat them. I was just a young whipper-snapper. I played on special teams. But when we beat them, we printed up shirts that said “The LaGrange High Grangers. No. 1 in the state. No. 1 in the nation. No. 2 in Troupe County.” That was as a player my greatest moment and the greatest thing I was a part of.
As a fan, man, that’s tough. So many moments. When my best friend Steven played for the Falcons and they played the Eagles in 2004 in the NFL Championship game. They lost that game, but just seeing my best friend playing out there, that was a real special moment. But 2001, that Georgia-Tennessee game. My boy Verron Haynes caught that pass from David Greene, and me and my road manager, we were just sitting in Times Square and that was special because it was Mark Richt’s first year, and it was also when my career was initially taking off. That was when “Ugly” was out. I was experiencing so many new things, and back in those days, Georgia could never beat Tennessee. Tennessee was top 10, and we beat them up in Knoxville, and I got to share it in New York with all these fans.
