Ben Rector stopped by The Bobby Bones Show today (August 19) to perform some of his songs and talk about his new collaborations.
"What Makes A Man" is one of Rector's newest collaboration with Thomas Rhett. A friend told Rector that Rhett really likes his music, and encouraged Rector to reach out to him. But he never did. They ended up getting in a writing session together after the COVID pandemic, which connected the two of them. When Rector wrote "What Makes A Man," he thought of Rhett and texted him a voice memo. He told Rhett he had this song, and believed it described both of their lives and thought it would be a good collaboration, but he also told him that he could "totally say no" if he wanted to. Rhett loved it, and they jumped on the song together. Another collaboration Rector had an adventure on was his song "Sunday" with Snoop Dogg. When he wrote the song, he knew he wanted Snoop Dogg to be on it, so they reached out to his manager who said that Snoop Dogg has to like the song if he is going to be on it. He liked it, so Rector and his team figured out his compensation, which was "a saga" itself. And he made a stipulation that he would only record the rap one time, no redos. Then Rector told Snoop Dogg it had to be a clean rap, because of his audience. But when Rector was texted the rap from Snoop Dogg's team, it included a line about weed. Rector freaked out and didn't know what to do. So he talked to Snoop Dogg's team and he was ok with Rector swapping out that line for something Rector rapped. So now the rap features both Rector and Snoop Dogg together rather than including the explicit version of the rap.
The song "Sunday" is also currently being used for Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN. Rector shared he got a call from the ESPN team who wanted to set up a meeting with him after pitching him some promos. He went to the meeting, but told them he didn't need to be pitched. He was all about them using his song. Another one of his songs has also been seen on national television through a popular commercial. His song "Brand New" was picked up by Weight Watchers for their re-branding campaign featuring Oprah. Because of that campaign, this song has millions of streams.
Watch Ben Rector perform his songs "What Makes A Man," "Brand New" and "Sunday."