Charlie Farley

Arkansas hick-hop artist Charlie Farley leveraged his independently released digital tracks, mixtapes, and videos into a recording contract, live performance opportunities, and entries on the country charts.

Poetry became an early outlet for Farley at age 12, yet only after finishing high school did he begin pairing those accumulated lyrics with beats and instrumentation inside a makeshift studio, steadily generating one mixtape after another. As a dedicated fisherman and hunter, he secured his initial opportunity by writing and tracking a fishing-themed rap for the television series Exposed. That facility with the country-rap style later secured a production arrangement through Phivestarr Productions alongside an album contract from Colt Ford’s Average Joes Entertainment, which issued his debut full-length, Hog Heaven, in early 2014.

Opting for independence on his follow-up, All I’ve Been Through, Farley saw the project surface in spring 2016; it registered across multiple digital charts and supported limited regional live dates. Nearly two years afterward he returned to the studio to deliver the album Winning with the Losers on his own Back Road Records imprint, still distributed by Average Joes Entertainment, and the release reached the Top 25 of the country Heatseekers charts.