Uncle Kracker Is Back

06/17/09 5:35pm

by Bianca Marcus (CHARTattack)

Everyone's favourite uncle is back, and he wants you to smile about it.

The rap-rock-turned-country singer Uncle Kracker will release Happy Hour, his first album in five years, on Sept. 15 through Atlantic Records and Kid Rock's Top Dog Records.

The album's first single, "Smile," is streaming on Entertainment Weekly magazine's website. You can buy an MP3 of the track through the singer's website.

If this track is any indication of what the rest of the album sounds like, Kracker (real name Matthew Shafer) has decided to go all-out country pop, which must have something to do with all the time he's been spending with Kenny Chesney.

"It's a pop-rock record, still with a little country [and] soul fused through it — not a big departure from anything I've done before," Kracker told Billboard.com. "There's more uptempo than there is on my last three records. I'm pretty stoked about it." 

No track list for the 12-song Happy Hour has been announced, but songs that have been confirmed to appear on it so far include the title track, "Smile," "Good To Be Me," "Hot Mess," "I Hate California" and "Corner Bar."

  Kracker started out as a solo rapper and later joined his friend Kid Rock's live band, Twisted Brown Trucker, on turntables. He released his first solo album in 2001, which featured the hit single "Follow Me." Shafer's cover of "Drift Away," from his sophomore album, No Stranger To Shame, spent a record 22 weeks at #1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.