The 2010s File Feature
This Is How We Roll
The Recording and Chart History of "This Is How We Roll" by Florida Georgia Line Featuring Jason Derulo and Luke Bryan "This Is How We Roll" is a country rap…
01 The Story
The Recording and Chart History of "This Is How We Roll" by Florida Georgia Line Featuring Jason Derulo and Luke Bryan
"This Is How We Roll" is a country rap and country pop crossover track by Florida Georgia Line, originally released in 2013 as part of their debut album Here's to the Good Times, which had been released in December 2012. The song was written by Florida Georgia Line members Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley alongside songwriters Craig Wiseman and Chase Bryant. The original album version of the track appeared as a straight country recording, but it was the later remix version featuring both Jason Derulo and Luke Bryan that became the commercially dominant form of the song and drove its extended chart run on the Billboard Hot 100.
Florida Georgia Line had emerged as one of the most significant forces in the bro-country movement that was reshaping mainstream country music during this period. Their debut single "Cruise," eventually featuring rapper Nelly in a remix that became the best-selling digital country single in history at the time of its release, demonstrated the commercial potential of country music that incorporated hip-hop aesthetics, language, and production sensibilities. "This Is How We Roll" continued in this vein, building on the aesthetic approach that "Cruise" had pioneered.
The addition of Jason Derulo to the remix brought a significant pop and R&B dimension to the track, expanding its potential radio reach beyond traditional country formats. Derulo, whose career during this period was marked by a series of high-charting pop singles, brought vocal performance and genre credibility that appealed to pop and urban radio programmers. Luke Bryan, meanwhile, was himself among the most commercially successful country artists of the era, with multiple number-one country singles and albums, and his presence reinforced the track's country authenticity while also broadening its appeal through his substantial mainstream country following.
The remix version of "This Is How We Roll" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 75 during the chart dated December 14, 2013. The song's chart trajectory was notable for its extended buildup, spending a period off the chart before returning and beginning a more sustained climb through 2014. It reached its peak position of number 15 during the chart dated June 21, 2014, spending a total of 28 weeks on the Hot 100. This extended chart presence reflected both the song's crossover appeal across multiple radio formats and the sustained promotional push from Republic Nashville, Florida Georgia Line's label.
On the Hot Country Songs chart, the track performed even more impressively, spending multiple weeks inside the top five and establishing itself as one of the defining country crossover hits of 2014. The song's ability to chart simultaneously on country, pop, and adult top 40 formats demonstrated the commercial effectiveness of the bro-country crossover strategy that Florida Georgia Line had helped pioneer. Radio airplay was particularly strong in markets where country and pop audiences overlap, including the Sun Belt and Midwest regions where country music has traditionally had its deepest penetration.
The music video, featuring all four credited artists together in a sunny, outdoor setting consistent with the song's themes of outdoor recreation and celebration, received substantial airplay on CMT and other country-oriented visual media channels. The visual presentation reinforced the song's lifestyle imagery and was consistent with the broader visual language of the bro-country movement, which emphasized trucks, outdoor settings, and summer leisure activities.
In critical assessments of the bro-country movement, "This Is How We Roll" is frequently cited as one of the most commercially successful examples of the genre's crossover strategy. The track accumulated approximately 281 million YouTube views in the years following its release, reflecting sustained global interest in a song that captured a specific moment in the evolution of mainstream American country music and its relationship with adjacent popular genres.
02 Song Meaning
Themes and Meaning of "This Is How We Roll" by Florida Georgia Line Featuring Jason Derulo and Luke Bryan
"This Is How We Roll" is a lifestyle celebration anthem rooted in the specific cultural imagery of rural and suburban American life as mediated through the bro-country aesthetic. The song presents an idealized vision of leisure, community, and identity defined by trucks, cold beverages, outdoor settings, and the company of friends and romantic partners. The central declaration of the title, repeated throughout the track, functions as a collective identity statement: this is who we are, how we spend our time, and what we value. The "we" is both specific to a cultural community and broad enough to invite any listener into the collective.
The song engages with themes of simple pleasure and present-moment contentment that have been central to country music's emotional vocabulary since the genre's origins. The pleasures it describes are deliberately accessible and unexotic: summer evenings, music on the radio, the reliable satisfaction of a cold drink after a warm day's work, and the ease of being among people who share the same values and habits. This emphasis on the ordinary rather than the exceptional is part of the song's appeal, as it validates a way of life that mainstream media frequently overlooks in favor of urban or aspirationally elite lifestyles.
The inclusion of Jason Derulo introduces a pop and R&B perspective that broadens the song's cultural frame without fundamentally altering its thematic content. His contribution signals that the lifestyle being celebrated is not exclusive to any single genre audience, that the pleasures of outdoor leisure, community, and summer celebration are broadly human rather than narrowly regional. This act of generic translation is part of what made the bro-country crossover formula commercially effective during this period.
Luke Bryan's presence reinforces the song's country authenticity credentials while also grounding it in the mainstream country sound that Bryan himself helped define during this era. His vocal contribution serves as an endorsement of the lifestyle imagery as genuine cultural expression rather than commercial calculation, though critics of the bro-country movement frequently argued that the formula itself was commercially motivated. These debates about authenticity and commercialization were central to the critical reception of bro-country as a movement.
The song also participates in a long tradition of American popular music that defines community through shared leisure practices. From the beach music of the 1960s to the tailgate anthems of the 2000s, songs that describe specific rituals of togetherness create the communities they ostensibly merely describe. "This Is How We Roll" functions this way, giving a heterogeneous audience of country and pop listeners a set of images and phrases through which to recognize and express a shared cultural identity.
In retrospect, the song documents a specific moment in American popular culture when country music was aggressively expanding its audience through stylistic hybridization, and when the idealized rural lifestyle it depicted held particular appeal for audiences seeking alternatives to urban cultural narratives. The track's sustained digital audience reflects both genuine affection for its emotional content and the nostalgia that inevitably accumulates around songs associated with a specific era of youth and summer pleasure.
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