The country artist known simply as Ernest is sipping a couple of cocktails on a recent afternoon on the rooftop garden of Soho House in West Hollywood, a diamond pendant the size of an AA battery nestled inside the open collar of his blue Western shirt. .
The pendant, which reads DANGEROUS, is one of three matching pieces he commissioned from an Orange County jeweler (one for Ernest, one for Hardy and one for Morgan Wallen) as a memento of the trio's time writing songs together for Wallen's six-year term. -platinum “Dangerous: The Double Album”. The Western shirt, meanwhile, reflects Ernest's love for Ralph Lauren. The designer's career in fashion, as depicted in the 2019 documentary “Very Ralph,” “changed my life,” Ernest says. “Seriously. I saw it three or four years ago and shortly after that I cleaned out my closet and started buying Double RL.” Ernest's moodboard for the cover of his new album, “Nashville, Tennessee,” contained a photo of Lauren leaning on a barn with an American flag in the background.
“We shot the cover in my barn,” he says of himself and his wife, Delaney Royer, who handles Ernest's visual content. “But we made the mood board before we even bought our farm.”
Ernest, 32, the rare Nashville native in country music, has always been interested in clothing, even if he lacked the means to indulge his passion. “High school was Sperrys, khakis and a school polo,” he says. Now, however, thanks to the number one country hits he has written for Sam Hunt (“Breaking Up Was Easy in the 90s”), Kane Brown (“One Mississippi”) and especially Wallen, with whom he wrote nearly two dozen songs in “ Dangerous ” and Wallen’s 2023 blockbuster “ One Thing at a Time ” — he has plenty of money to splurge on more imaginative yarns.
“I was here for like 48 hours and I brought five outfits,” he says with a laugh at Soho House, where he will spend part of a quick trip to Los Angeles before heading to Dodger Stadium to watch his childhood friend, Mookie Betts, battle the Giants . . (Hence, perhaps, his choice of blue).
As a songwriter, Ernest specializes in creating melodies and vocal lines that adapt a rapper's flow patterns to the cadences of country music; His tunes embody the casual hybridity of a generation that grew up in the overlapping shadows of Garth Brooks and Snoop Dogg. His latest hit, “I Had Some Help” by the duo of Post Malone and Wallen, came out on Friday and skyrocketed over the weekend to the top of Spotify's Global Top 50 chart with more than 13 million streams. .
“Ernest is one of the most magical songwriters in Nashville,” says Jelly Roll, the Southern rapper-turned-country singer who wrote his hit song “Son of a Sinner” with Ernest. “When we look back at the 2020s, he will be one of the names remembered for bringing a complete sound to this decade.”
As an artist, however, he's trying something slightly different on “Nashville, Tennessee,” his second self-titled LP following 2022's “Flower Shops (The Album).” It's a sprawling 26-track collection that dates back to a old-fashioned country music sensibilities, with thunderous honky-tonk jams set against finely detailed string band excursions and beautiful beer-drinking ballads. Among Ernest's goals for the project is to introduce these traditional styles to younger listeners attuned to his more modern work.
“If you like the way it feels,” he says, “go see Vern Gosdin or Roger Miller or listen to 'Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music' by Ray Charles.”
At the same time, he is eager to broaden the minds of older people potentially predisposed to dismiss people like Wallen or Hardy. “Some of the songs I've written for other artists definitely fall into the category of that's not country,” he says. “It's easy for someone to say that because it's got 808s or trap beats or all that stuff. But that comes from the same hands that wrote a song on my album like 'Ai n't as Easy,'” he adds, referring to a sumptuous weeper wrapped in pedal steel.
Ernest, left, Morgan Wallen and Hardy at the Academy of Country Music Honors in Nashville in 2022.
(Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for ACM)
The result has a kind of musicological sweep that not only honors the cultural breadth of Ernest's hometown (a city he loves so much that his and Royer's three-year-old son is named Ryman after Nashville's historic Ryman Auditorium), but also evokes ideas of lineage and inheritance.
“Ernest is a true student of country music and I think he's on his way to becoming a master of his craft,” says Lukas Nelson, who joins Ernest for a duet on the bouncing western swing number “Why Dallas.” . “He's already had commercial success, but I think he and I agree that the master's degree has nothing to do with it. Mastery has more to do with the depth of your art.”
In fact, you can see Ernest's ambitions with “Nashville, Tennessee” as his way of spending some of the music business capital he's accumulated over the past few years. “That's what I did with 'A Star Is Born,'” says Nelson, who sees the songs he wrote for the 2018 Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga blockbuster as “a vehicle to further fuel my creativity.”
“I want this album to live beyond just being a hot, hot record right now,” Ernest says. “That's secondary to the importance of it being one of those albums we'll talk about in the future.”
He might end up getting both: Last month, Ernest had a great spot on the main stage at Indio's Stagecoach festival, where he also made cameos with Wallen and with Nelson and Willie, Nelson's 90-year-old father legend. . And he's up for two awards at this week's Academy of Country Music Awards with nominations for new male artist of the year and artist-songwriter of the year.
Before seriously pursuing music, Ernest (whose last name is Smith) grew up playing baseball. He has known Betts, a fellow Nashville native, since he was 8 years old and competed alongside and against him until they both graduated high school. “Mookie struck out once his senior year and I didn't,” he says today with a smile.
When he was a kid, his “holy trinity” of musicians were Eminem, John Mayer and George Strait; After dropping out of college, he made a brief attempt at becoming a rapper, but eventually refocused on country songwriting. Hunt's 2014 debut, “Montevallo,” in which the former college football player nailed a stylish blend of country, hip-hop and R&B, was a crucial inspiration. “Everyone fought,” says Ernest. His first big moment as an artist came in 2021 with his song “Flower Shops,” a duet with Wallen that charted in the top 20 of Billboard's country chart and led to a profile-boosting concert as an opening act for Wallen on tour.
For the new album, which opens with a fun (and true) duet with Jelly Roll called “I Went to College / I Went to Jail,” Ernest and his producer, Joey Moi, instituted what they called “the Opry filter.” “That meant that all arrangements had to be playable by the band live at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville; no samples or programmed beats were allowed.
“We did everything as authentically as possible,” says Moi, who also produces Wallen and Hardy records. “All the Nashville players, these guys who have been around for two, three, four decades, are obsessed with Ernest. They say: 'Oh my God… finally.'”
Ernest performs at the Stagecoach festival in April.
(Evan Schaben / for The Times)
However, Ernest hardly maintains a gatekeeper mentality when it comes to country music. “I think the genre is open right now in the best way possible,” he says as he orders another drink (a bee's knee, to be exact) from a waiter. When asked what he thinks about the handful of pop stars (including Malone, Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey) who are making strides into country lately, he says, “It just means there are more eyes on country music. I think Beyoncé will do for the genre what Taylor Swift did for the NFL. “It is an honor for me to be able to release an album and live in the same world as the queen.”
Do you have a favorite song from Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter”? “Spaghetti,” she replies. “I love that he's talking about her shit. It shows that he did his homework and I thank him for it.” Ernest says she heard Del Rey's “Lasso,” the title track from an album she says will be out later this year, and that it's good; She also says that she has written “a ton of songs” with Malone besides “I Had Some Help.”
He's equally enthusiastic about Zach Bryan, the raw, rootsy singer-songwriter from Oklahoma who has irritated some in the Nashville recording industry by building a huge audience without relying on the help of country radio. “Fuck, he doesn't care so much,” says Ernest. “Things can be so beautiful and so cared for. What he does is refreshing. People say his records sound like he recorded them in a bedroom or a basement. But guess that? “Most people listen to it in a bedroom or basement.”
As Ernest prepares to spend the summer on tour with Brooks & Dunn, does he ever think back to his early days as a rapper? “Oh yes, all of that is in my DNA as a creator,” he says. His favorite part of rapping was the freestyle, he adds; he has videos on his phone of him and Jelly Roll riding back and forth on a tour bus for an hour straight.
“Now when I pick up a guitar, I feel like the world is moving slowly,” he says. “Thoughts come much faster than I have time to say them.”
