Chase Rice is finished trying to be someone he isn't. He admits that at times he tried to make music like Florida Georgia Line or attempted to sound like Sam Hunt. With his new album, "I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell," Rice just wants to be himself.

"I've talked about before from (Florida Georgia Line), me trying to do what they were doing, trying to do what Sam (Hunt} did, and then, right now, it's like Morgan (Wallen) and Zach (Bryan), those are the two guys everybody talks about," Rice told Today's Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen on Apple Music Country. "I don't have one thought of, 'I want to try to do what those guys do.' I listen to their music, and I'm like, 'This is sick.' But that's sick because they're being themselves ... And then I listen to my record. I'm like, 'This is sick.' I'm like, 'I finally hear me in it,' as opposed to trying to be something else."

Rice made "I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell" with producer Oscar Charles, an experience he calls spiritual and unbelievable.

"From meeting Oscar to telling him the story of 'Bench Seat,' to playing him other songs, man, we cried on this record making it," Rice said. "I go in, I do a take, and I'm just like, 'Whew, that was real.' But then sometimes you'll hear the producer be like, 'Yeah, man, but this was a little too much here.' Then all of a sudden, I'd be like, 'Was that all right?" And he'd just be like, 'Yeah, man … that was unbelievable.'"

As for the album's standout songs, Rice picks "Way Down Yonder" and says it might sounds like it belongs on one of his bro-country records based on the title, but it isn't that song at all.

"I was like, we're not doing the truck, dirt road, the girl, the moon, the stars, all bullshit," he said. "But I was adamant to not do that. So we made it about moonshine, which I love the history of being from North Carolina and NASCAR and all that. And then we did the production part, and I was like, 'Oh, this is nasty.' Oscar (is) the first guy that's (not) going to be like, "Hey, would radio play that?" He never once said, 'Hey man, this one's going to be a radio single. Let's try this.' It was just, 'Let's make the best song possible.'"

As for which song says something about his life, "I Walk Alone" is the obvious answer to the singer. He said it's about his career and his life, which he calls "all a lot of self-sabotage."

"My whole career, I was always like... 'No, I don't want to be an artist that gets on the Grammys,'" he said. "Grammys don't sell tickets. Yeah, they do sometimes. But that's stupid. Stop trying to make a point with your music and just, for me, and just make great music. And so I was trying to be this guy that was a recluse that just stayed away from the mainstream thing but also stayed away from the artistic thing. What is that? Then, where are you?"

Rice said he ended up being someone who doesn't know anyone in the music industry and that no one knew him.

"But that's not me," he said. "Now I have a bunch of buddies in the industry, and we're all just cool, having fun together. So, I think I made myself be this guy that was doing everything alone. 'I'm doing it myself. This is my way.' But you don't have to be asshole to everybody else when you're doing that. And I was being that guy."