Jason Aldean got a chance to know Post Malone after the 2024 ACM Awards, but he’s been wanting to record with him for years.

The “Let Your Boys Be Country” singer says he thinks Post Malone has an intangible needed to find success crossing genres. Talking to Taste of Country Nights‘ Evan Paul, Aldean reflected on a wild ACM afterparty before going deep on what’s needed to hop from pop or hip-hop to country.

• “Let Your Boys Be Country” is building to be Aldean’s 26th No. 1 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart.
• Post Malone notched a No. 1 with his Morgan Wallen duet, “I Had Some Help.”
• His F-1 Trillion album drops on Aug. 16 and features Wallen, Blake Shelton, Chris Stapleton, Luke Combs and (maybe) more.

Related: Post Malone’s 8 Best Classic Country Covers

“Me, Kane (Brown), Jelly Roll and Post Malone ended up playing beer pong all night,” Aldean shares, thinking back on the mid-May awards show in Frisco, Texas. The town isn’t known for an exotic night life, but a text thread settled on a little bar on the outskirts of town. These opportunities are his favorite.

“It’s not so much the show — I mean the show’s cool — but it’s the stuff like that where you get to hang out with your boys and have some fun,” Aldean says.

Pop artists going country are no sure thing. For every Darius Rucker there’s at least one Jessica Simpson.

“To me it seems like country music is one of those things that, you know, whenever somebody’s career is doing not as well as it once did, sometimes they like to come over to country,” Aldean says.

“I don’t think that’s the case with Post.”

Post Malone grew up loving country music in Texas, and his sincerity comes across. That, the 20-year Nashville veteran says, is why his road is a little easier than most.

“I think the country music fans — a lot like they did with Kid Rock — will kind of welcome him with open arms,” he adds. “They won’t do that for everybody, but I think he’s a guy that country music fans like.”

Kid Rock and Post Malone’s music is wildly different, but it’s worth exploring their similarities. Both men were white guys who faced skepticism as they made hip-hop music. Both grew up middle class families listening to a wide range of styles and sounds.

Both men moved out early and both like guns. Okay, that last fact isn’t relevant to Aldean’s comparison, but still it’s remarkable.

When Kid Rock dropped “Picture” with Sheryl Crow in 2002, the country audience embraced it, paving the way for his occasional return to the genre.

Post Malone asked Wallen for a lead in to the genre. Whether his commitment is sporadic or not remains to be seen. Aldean hopes he can be a part of the next wave. Now that he has Post Malone’s phone number, he says he told his friend to be ready for a song pitch.

Billy Dukes is a Senior Editor and Executive Producer of Video Content at Taste of Country. He specializes in country music interviews, trend analysis and the Secret History of Country Music. Additionally, Billy covers Yellowstone, 1923 and related television shows through the Dutton Rules podcast. To date, he’s written more than 13,000 articles for Taste of Country and produced over 3,000 videos for the Taste of Country YouTube channel.