Blanco Brown knows a thing or two about turning a bitter experience into a sweet one.

In August 2020, Brown was hit head-on and nearly killed by a drunk driver while riding his motorcycle. He endured multiple hours-long surgeries, a lengthy ICU stay, and months of rehabilitation therapy, during which he had to re-learn how to do everything from hold a microphone to walk.

“Not being able to do anything about it, and the other driver got to walk scot-free — I went to a bitter moment,” Brown admits. It’s an understandable reaction, but Brown knew he couldn’t wallow in it: “I had to let it go, let God, and keep the positivity in things,” he says.

To alter a cliché, Brown is taking lemons and making his Heartache & Lemonade EP. And he sees these four songs — and the other new tracks he’s got in his back pocket for release down the line — as an opportunity not to be wasted.

“It wasn’t by mistake, it was by the grace of God, that I actually got a second chance at life,” Brown continues. “That accident woke me up, and it made me want to do more and get more done in the space I’m in. With music, I get to lay my emotions on the line for eternity, so I take it real serious.”

Brown has worked as a songwriter and a producer within pop and hip-hop with acts including Fergie, Childish Gambino, Kane Brown, and Chris Brown, earning a Grammy nomination, but he made a name for himself in country music by blending classically country and traditionally hip-hop sounds, as well as the storytelling of both styles, into what he calls “TrailerTrap.” With his new music, he’s aiming to mix fresh sounds and impactful messages with the fun and sweetness of his biggest hits that have resulted in over two billion on demand audio streams: the platinum-certified #1 singles “The Git Up” — the viral hit that topped the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for 12 weeks and was the top-selling digital country song in the United States for 13 weeks with more than 1.4 billion audio streams and four billion video streams across platforms — and “Just the Way,” a collaboration with Parmalee that has earned more than 504 million on-demand streams.

“I’m always trying to take my sound to the next level,” says Brown, who draws inspiration from a vinyl collection that includes records from the 1940s onward. “I wanted these songs to be bright and lighthearted, but also at the same time, carry enough weight to impact listeners.”

Heartache & Lemonade accomplishes that goal in a variety of ways: the EP-opening “Energy” finds Brown in a tough emotional space but determined to turn things around, while the radio-ready “Sunshine Shine,” Brown explains, “is about being your own light and allowing yourself to grace the world with your greatness, being positive and influential, and being in a space that no one can dim your light.”

Nostalgia runs through the fiddle and steel–drenched “Tailgating in the Sun,” which reflects one part of the dichotomy of Brown’s childhood in Georgia. He grew up in Atlanta’s Bankhead neighborhood but spent summers with relatives in the small, rural town of Butler.

“‘Tailgating in the Sun’ takes me back to laying on the back of a long bed kicking it with my college sweetheart. I picture a beautiful day where the weather is just perfect, the truck’s started, the radio’s playing our favorite songs, there’s a cooler full of some cold ones and a lot of tailgating fun! We could hear the cheering from the stadium in the background, but I just got a touchdown!”

Brown reconnects with a familiar collaborator on Heartache & Lemonade: Parmalee’s Matt Thomas co-wrote the slow-burning “Good as It Gets,” in which Brown savors the moments he’s been given. After all, he truly knows they’re far from guaranteed.

“When it comes to this album, I gave it my all,” Brown says. “I didn’t know if I was gonna walk again; I didn’t know what life had for me. But the fact that I’m here in good mind and good heart and good spirit, and I can continue to create — I know that I have a purpose to serve.