Dylan Scott will release his self-titled debut album on Friday (Aug. 12), but Taste of Country has your early listen one day before it drops. The "My Girl" singer also dished to us about his unique brand of country, as well as the stories behind a few of the songs on the record.

The 13-track album is versatile, combining Scott's love of traditional country with distinct pop and urban influences. A self-professed Keith Whitley fan, Scott admits that he grew up listening to everything from Lil Wayne and R. Kelly to Maroon 5, but he's always had a soft spot for acts like Whitley.

"Keith Whitley is old school country. Back in the '80s, that was my Elvis," Scott shares. "When I moved to Nashville I thought, 'I'll move to Nashville and be the next Keith Whitley.' But as we know, country music is evolving everyday into something else, so I had to find who I was as an artist so I just started writing songs."

Writing songs helped Dylan find his voice. The 25-year-old wrote seven of the 13 tracks on the Dylan Scott album, and while he knows the album is not traditional country, it is his truth. The songs — like "Beer Buddies" and "Do You Think About Me" — come from the life he has lived.

"We roll into town around 9 or 10, hang out with all of our friends on the hood of our cars at a Walmart parking lot," he sings on "Do You Think About Me."

"That's what we did Friday, Saturday night, so I just took those lyrics and tried to find something cool and fun with it," he explains of the urban-leaning track.

Meanwhile, the idea for "Beer Buddies" came to mind after seeing a friend's Facebook status while Scott was wide awake one Friday night in a hotel room in California.

"'Beer Buddies' is about friends that you call at 2:00 3:00, 4:00 in the morning — they're always there. We've all got those friends," he says. "One of my buddy's Facebook statuses was 'hanging out with my beer buddies.' I thought, 'Man, what a great song it could be,' so we wrote that."

Scott says all of the songs on the album are honest, even if he didn't have a hand in writing them himself. "Living Room," written by Brian Callihan, Matt Rogers and Wynn Varble, is one of his favorite songs, and he says it's the perfect example of the saying, 'you don't know what you have until it's gone.' It's a song about a man who thinks he needs more space from his girlfriend, only to learn that once he finally does get that space he now has too much living room.

Scott calls his debut album "my baby" and his current single "My Girl" is about his real life baby — his new wife — whom he has dated for nearly 10 years.

"It's about my girl. We were riding around one night. I'd never really heard her sing before but she started rapping word for word with all the hand motions to Eminem's 'Lose Yourself,'" Scott recalls. "I was hanging out with some buddies a couple weeks later and thought, 'Man, I really want to write a song about that moment,' but I didn't know how to do it besides just call it 'My Girl' and write about all the things that I get to see in my girl, and the things that all guys get to see in their girls that nobody really pays attention to."

Dylan Scott's debut album is out Friday (Aug. 12). Buy it here.

Listen to Dylan Scott, Dylan Scott

More Great Albums to Buy in 2016

More From Taste of Country