Imagine a college quarterback, right. He’s got all the tools, the arm, the instincts, the competitive fire. He gets a tryout with the Kansas City Chiefs. An actual NFL workout. And then walks away. Like just turns his back on a shot at professional football and picks up a pen and starts writing country songs.

He basically created a lane in country music where the vocal delivery borrows heavily from spoken word poetry and R&B phrasing. And the production is anchored by electronic beats and programmed drums. You listen to something like Body Like a Back Road and it sounds closer to a Drake record than it does to a George Strait song.

• Today we are going to take a deep dive into the career of Sam Hunt
• He was born on December 8, 1984, in Cedartown, Georgia
• He was a standout quarterback at Middle Tennessee State University
• He is one of the most polarizing figures in modern country music
• His debut album Montevallo was named after the Alabama hometown of his then-girlfriend