DARIUS RUCKER - WHAT I KNOW NOW

THE BELOVED ROCKER TURNED COUNTRY STAR REFLECTS ON FAME, FAMILY & FORGING HIS OWN PATH

- RACHEL DESANTIS

He’s won three Grammys and sold millions of records, but when Darius Rucker was growing up in Charleston, S.C., he wasn’t the best singer in his house—his mother, Carolyn, was. “She sang effortlessly beautifully,” Rucker recalls of his mom, who died of a heart attack in 1992. “She’s been gone for so long, but I still think about her every day. I hope I’m making her proud.”

Though Rucker, 57, has scaled the charts—both with his rock band Hootie & the Blowfish, which reunited for an album and tour in 2019, and as a solo country star—he’s never left his humble roots in the rearview. Rucker still lives in South Carolina, where he raised his three children, daughter Daniela, 22, and son Jack, 18 (whom he shares with his ex Beth, 56), and daughter Carolyn, 28, from a previous relationship. And now he’s named his new album Carolyn’s Boy (out Oct. 6) after the single mom who raised him. “Charley Pride gave me great advice,” Rucker says of the late country legend. “He always said, ‘Just keep being you. When you stop being you, it’s not real. That’s why you made it, because people know this s--- is real. They can tell when you sing it.’” Here Rucker opens up about heeding that advice, cracking country music as a Black artist and how his kids keep him grounded.

Success is best when it’s enjoyed with loved ones.