For decades, Southern Soul has survived underground. SC artists are leading its mainstream revival By Vincent Harris Special to Free Times Have you heard the recent viral TikTok hit “Tonight” — “Tonight/I’m loving you all night” — by Matt B? How about “Keep On Steppin’” — “Keep on steppin’/Don’t you stop now” — by Mike Clark, Jr.? If not those two, perhaps you’ve heard the most viral of them all, 803South’s “Boots On The Ground:” “Boots on the ground/We outside tonight.” These songs aren’t the forefront of a new genre — you’re listening to Southern Soul. Sure there are some modern-day bells and whistles. The bass is now subsonic for maximum vibration, and the beats are occasionally programmed rather than played. But the basic chassis of all those viral hits is a familiar genre, Southern Soul. After years spent underground, it’s back with a vengeance. And Columbia is leading the charge. In fact, all of those artists we listed above are from around the Midlands. What is Southern Soul? There is soul music, and then there is Southern soul music. And the difference isn’t just geographical. Southern Soul is what happens when gospel can’t stay in church, when the blues feels joyful, when country gets funky and when everyday life — everyday messy, funny, painful, intimate life — demands to be sung about in plain language. “It’s blues and a little bit of country and a little bit of R&B,” Matt B, a Columbia native, told Free Times. “It’s all three of those genres in one. And you’re expressing your lifestyle, country living. It’s about where you’re from.” In fact, Matt B first heard Southern Soul at a spot that’s about as Southern as sweet tea. “I heard it at the cookouts,” he said with a laugh. “I also heard it called ‘Cookout Music’ and ‘Two Steppin’ Music.’ Being around the older folks, they didn’t really want to hear that rap and stuff, they wanted to put on that old music. Which was hard to understand as a kid, but now we’re loving it. It’s fun.” STORIES FOR YOU Education Lab Citing caution and safety concerns, SC State pulls Lt. Gov. Pam Evette’s graduation speaker invite Spartanburg Business Spartanburg chicken restaurant from Main Street Pub owner aims to keep Raising Cane’s out USC Gamecocks sports Dawn Staley adds another player to loaded Gamecocks’ basketball roster Crime 19-year-old hit multiple times after Dorchester County crash. Troopers ask public for information. Southern Soul was born in studios that felt like back rooms and in trial-by-fire juke joints found in Deep South cities like Memphis, Tenn., Muscle Shoals, Ala., and Jackson, Miss. As with many musical genres, you can trace Southern Soul back to the great Ray Charles. When Charles fused sacred intensity with secular themes in the 1950s, he didn’t just blur a line — he helped create a whole new emotional vocabulary upon which Southern artists would spend decades expanding. By the ‘60s, labels like Stax Records and Hi Records built on that vocabulary, emphasizing feel rather than polish. You hear tight rhythm sections, punchy horns and singers pushed right to the edge of their voices. You hear it in Otis Redding, whose delivery could turn a simple phrase into a full-body plea, or in Al Green, who made restraint sound just as intense as release. 803Fresh — COVER CHOICE #1 803Fresh is a South Carolina musician whose Southern Soul song “Boots on the Ground” is a megahit. Trey Jennings/Provided Down in Alabama, the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section created a looser, swampier groove that let singers stretch out, testify and sometimes just talk their way through a song. You can hear those funky, real, and real funky foundations on 803Fresh’s Grammy-award-nominated “Boots On The Ground,” easily the biggest hit in the recent Southern Soul revival. The song has been streamed more than 14 million times since its late 2024 release, and the video has been viewed 26 million times. The beat is tight, but there’s a looseness in 803Fresh’s gritty delivery. The song is danceable as hell, but only a bit faster than midtempo, as good for hanging with friends as it is for cutting a rug. The song never rushes. It stays sunny and delivers the chorus with an easy, but not complacent, confidence. “It really started with ‘Boots On The Ground,’” Matt B said. “That song took off two years ago and pointed people towards everybody else’s Southern Soul songs, like King George. So those artists have helped that genre come up to today.” And as odd as it might seem for a genre with its roots in the 1950s to become a viral TikTok sensation, the music is actually perfect for video-driven social media, like Hopkins’ native King George’s “Keep On Rollin.’” Some tracks were created to inspire dance moves, which people are only too happy to provide. The lyrics almost invariably tell interesting short stories that invite further listening. And perhaps most importantly, neo-Southern Soul artists typically concentrate on putting out a lot of singles, just like Redding and Charles did back in the day, providing a lot of content for the machine. TikTok didn’t change Southern Soul per se; it finally gave its communal, interactive nature the kind of stage it was built for. “We done picked up on the genre and taken it to another level,” Matt B said. “People are creating dances to these songs, and now they’re creating dances to the old songs as well.” The Underground Years So where did Southern Soul go between its late ‘60s-early ‘70s heyday and this new modern version? It never went away, but for a while it was hard to find. When Stax Records shuttered its doors and the industry shifted toward disco, then hip-hop and contemporary R&B — the gritty, gospel-soaked sound that defined artists like Redding — lost its footing in the mainstream. What had once been a dominant Southern export became something more regional and fragmented — less visible, but no
