Chase Rice

“Music is in our soul, it’s in our spirit,” country singer Chase Rice tells Apple Music. “We have to have that to survive and be human.” Rice, born in Florida, in 1985, and raised in North Carolina, has always had music in his soul looking to make its way into the world, even while playing linebacker for the University of North Carolina, working in the NASCAR pit crew for Hendrick Motorsports, and competing on Survivor: Nicaragua in 2010 (he finished second). While his 2011 EP Country As Me and 2012 album Dirt Road Communion made a splash in the wake of his Survivor appearance, it was his cowrite on Florida Georgia Line’s massive summer 2012 anthem “Cruise” that launched his career in earnest. You can’t make a go at careers in college football or NASCAR without giving it your all, and passion is the common thread in Rice’s songs as well. That ethos is present even when he’s turning things up with “Ready Set Roll,” a song that pushes an epic all-nighter out of party-time territory and into the realm of lifelong memories. Simmering, sexy slow jams like “Ride,” or the arms-aloft “Eyes on You” and its low-key twang, are dense with feelings, too—songs that sound driven by something deep in Rice’s soul.