The SY6: We Make Hay

When I am puzzled I turn to the Shropshire Star:

Church Stretton’s Jake Buchanan is bringing Shropshire hip hop to the masses on YouTube, y’all. Move over, rap stars with your flash cars, pimps and ho’s, because the SY6 are here, and they’ve got tractors, and wax jackets, and hoes (and garden forks as well) ... 

The idea began when Jake sampled the chorus of a 70-year-old Billy Merrin song called We’ll Make Hay, which featured in the BBC series Pennies From Heaven, and added a hip hop beat.  

Then he roped in some musically-minded friends who added their own parts to the chorus, and then he approached a farmer he knew. “I said ‘Can we run amok on your farm acting gangsta?’, and he said yes.” 

After one day of filming with a borrowed camera and a week’s editing, Jake has produced a four-minute “love letter to Shropshire” which acknowledges both the good and the rubbish aspects of rural county life. It’s a hip hop video in quite possibly the least hip hop setting on God’s good earth, with plenty of hardcore country accents thrown in.

Note that "We Make Hay" long predates Yeo Valley's similar TV commercials.

Elsewhere you can read its lyrics and listen to another track by The SY6.