Big Smo’s career as an entertainer is not a new one. He has been creating and performing music since he was a youngster, he says, and has hustled his way through the years to become a popular character among Middle Tennessee independent hip-hop circles.

But his rise to the national stage has materialized rather recently, and for that he credits staying true to his roots and never giving up.

2014 was a huge year for Smo (born John Lee Smith); his major-label debut, Kuntry Livin’, went to No. 3 on the U.S. rap charts, as his eponymous television series meanwhile debuted on the A&E network.

“It was a bumpy road,” Smo told the Murfreesboro Pulse just before the new year.

“When I was around 8 or 9, my parents bought me a keyboard,” Smo said when asked when his love for music and his career as an entertainer began. “My dad had one of the first video cameras, one of the big ones that you put on your shoulder that took VHS.”

The youngster, who grew up in Unionville, just south of Murfreesboro, would record himself performing selections by some of his favorites, such as DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Price, Beastie Boys, and The Fat Boys.

“I would film myself just jamming out,” Big Smo remembers. “Looking back, I didn’t look that much different from what I am today: camo head to toe, my dad’s dog tags and aviators . . . I keep a clip of it on my phone, and watch it quite often,” he laughed. Remember where you came from.

He credits his father for introducing the outlaw-country taste to his palate: “Waylon Jennings, Jerry Reed, Willie Nelson,” says Smo, adding that later, in his teen years, he “was big into writing short stories and poetry.”

Smo said he also got down with classic rock and Hank Jr. on the radio, and then went through a big gangsta rap phase. This infatuation with music all through his teen years culminated in his bedroom with “a 4-track, a Boss drum machine and a pen and a pad.”

“Through determination and curiosity, I figured out how to use the drum machine, how to get my vocals recorded, how to lay 4 tracks on top of each other,” Smo said. “I started blowing my friend’s minds . . . Me and my homie DJ Orig just saved our money up and started buying equipment. We did it ourselves. We didn’t have people telling us what sells. We were just making it up as we went along.

“Hip-hop, outlaw country and classic rock, all in the blender, that’s what Big Smo is,” the MC said. “It was a recipe that couldn’t be written out, it had to be lived.”

While the musical exploration and creative freedom helped build Smo into the artist he is today and resulted in a number of independent album releases, the business side of those years wasn’t exactly leading him to a flashy lifestyle of fame and fortune.

“Around 2006 I was pouring concrete, doing construction, coming home after working 12 hours and then trying to record,” said Smo, who at that time had kids to support, as well as some discouragement and thoughts of calling it quits with his artistic aspirations.

But through conversations with friends emerged the simple philosophy of keeping it real that Big Smo said breathed new life into his rap career.

“I just need to talk about my life, not talk about some pretend life,” he said. “The life that I live . . . we’re some country folk.”

There’s enough falseness in the music industry, Smo noted. Being able to deliver something genuine is what seems to work (and anyone from small-town Tennessee probably knows some individuals who have rarely set foot in a city, who have never lived the gangster lifestyle, but who adopt the urban, rap image as their own).

Smo said his talk of tractors, mud and bonfires, ridin’ back roads, smoking weed, and drinking moonshine and whiskey is what attracted his listeners and, eventually, his label.

The rise of early “hick-hop” pioneers, the recordings of which he would thump on some of those very same back roads, helped him formulate his style.

“Big shout out to Bubba Sparxxx,” Smo said of one of his more recent artistic inspirations, who would combine “some super hip-hop beats with twangy guitars . . . and Bubba was just smashing flows on it!”

But now it’s Smo who is “risin’ like biscuits,” and his fans, known collectively as his “Kinfoke,” dig it. They can look for a new 6-pack EP to drop in the coming months.

“Warner Brothers will release that right around the time when the second season of the TV show will come out,” Big Smo said. “All six songs are super-bangers, a whole new level of music for me.”

His whole family is getting in on the action now; Smo’s mother has an upcoming cookbook due to be published while his wife, Whitney, is working on her clothing line. And now, in downtown Bell Buckle, Smo fans can set foot in Big Smo’s Kuntry Store, where you can buy cooking products like meat mud, sweet tea sauce and chocolate gravy, Big Smo jewelry, items from his kids’ Lil’ Kinfoke clothing line—anything and everything Smo-related.

Big Smo assures his kinfoke that he’s just getting started. And while the extra cash is surely nice, “the ability to touch people’s hearts with music is priceless,” Smo said. “When people listen to the music, when people see the show, I want them to know they watch something that’s real, it’s not just thrown together.”

For more on the artist, visit therealbigsmo.com; for more on the reality show, visit aetv.com/big-smo; to order a jar of Meat Mud, visit bigsmosmeatmud.com.

Read more about Big Smo’s Murfreesboro performance here.