Post Malone has officially stepped into his Country era. The Pop superstar took the stage at Wednesday night’s 57th Annual CMA Awards alongside Morgan Wallen and HARDY with a special tribute to the late Joe Diffie.
Listen to CMA Nomination Station and more on the free Audacy app
The performance marked the revealing of HARDY’s Hixtape Vol 3 — an on-going project that features collabs of all kinds. The first two tracks on the album will be those performed tonight — Joe Diffie’s “John Deere Green” feat. Morgan Wallen and “Pickup Man” feat. Post Malone and Morgan Wallen. The release of the two songs is being referred to as Difftape (Small Batch).
While the arrival of Hixtape Vol. 3, and Post Malone’s feature on it, were a surprise kept secret until the show aired, it’s not completely out of left field as Posty has expressed his love for Country music before and shown interest in recording some Country music.
Ahead of the awards show, WYCD’s Grunwald caught up with HARDY who said he was “nervous” for the big performance that he knew millions of people were excited for.
“I get nervous,” he told Audacy’s Grunwald. “I don’t before my own shows, but this kinda stuff, I get nervous. It’s just different — you’re on a stage with like a million people watching, it’s a little bit different.”
As if the performance wasn’t big enough, HARDY revealed there was some added pressure with it being linked to an announcement.
“There is a plan, and I cannot talk about it yet, but it will all make sense after the awards,” he shared ahead of the show. Now we know and yes, after that performance, Post Malone and Country music makes a lot of sense.
While he wasn’t able to talk about the details of the performance before it happened, he was an open book about how the performance came together, and that he got to hang with Posty, which helped “break the ice.”
LISTEN NOW: HARDY charts with WYCD’s Grunwald ahead of CMA Awards
“I got to hang out with him the other night and sure enough, he’s a fan and such a great dude,” HARDY said with a smile. “We really got to break the ice and it really started feeling real. I was like, ‘Wow, I’m really going to do this with Post Malone.’”
The feeling is mutual for Post, who told HARDY he is a fan of his music as well. Sounds like the start to a beautiful friendship as Post begins to immerse himself more into the Country scene. We can’t wait to see where the creativity takes them… although HARDY promises it won’t include any facial tattoos on his part.
“If I could get one of those glow in the dark tattoos, I would get a face tattoo. But my wife and my mom would go mental,” he said. “I actually made a promise to my mom — she said, ‘I don’t care what you do, just please don’t get one above your neck, so then I just got a bunch of hand tattoos.”