Nashville’s Hip-Hop Scene Isn’t New – Forbes

Every few years, a fresh article is published about Nashville’s rising or burgeoning hip-hop scene — but what does it mean if a scene is always apparently “rising”? When does the scene finally establish, and more importantly, why has no one deemed it established, yet? 

The city hit rap music’s radar in 2004, when Young Buck released Straight Outta Cashville on 50 Cent’s G-Unit Records. Soon after, Nashville local Starlito signed to Lil Wayne’s Cash Money Records. A few other big names from the city followed suit, but like Buck and Starlito, many artists signed outside of the city — even though Nashville is home to multiple major labels and has a higher location quotient for the music industry than any other city in the United States. The city has always had talent, it’s merely been relocated. 

“If you’re in it, you know there’s talent and opportunity, but if you’re not in it, you wonder where it is,” says D’Llisha Davis, a hip-hop music liaison in Nashville. Davis is a full-time teacher who coordinates events and manages much of the city’s local hip-hop talent in order to uplift the scene. She returned to Nashville after graduating college in 2011, and has advocated for artists ever since. “You have to continue to push the market, because some of the industry transplants who make decisions in Nashville don’t think hip-hop exists here. Artists dive into different avenues on their own, with different producers or marketing perspectives from different cities, because they’re less welcome here,” she says.

Davis attributes this phenomenon to booking difficulties and limited radio programming, as well as a lack of Nashville executives who are well-versed in this genre. In a 2019 Belmont University panel called “The Rise of an Urban Music Scene in Nashville,” Davis and other panel members noted the city’s persistent talent, but lack of hip-hop-specific music business infrastructure and Black executives at all levels of the industry. The “rise” is not in artistry, but in industry attention as hip-hop continues to dominate popularity across the globe. 

But even though hip-hop has always been in Nashville, there is something special about this particular moment. Over the past few years, Nashville’s young artists have established strong communities, preferring to stake their claim on the city’s culture than sign in a city that isn’t theirs. Davis says the scene had to “create our own spaces,” so she streamlined 615 Day, a block party prioritizing local talent and small businesses, and The Underflow, a Red Bull-sponsored hip-hop music fest at Marathon Music Works. Thalia “Muziqueen” Ewing and Jamila “Mimi” McCarley, seeking equal resources for the hip-hop community, founded Nashville is Not Just Country Music, a creative space that builds connections between artists and provides business education opportunities. According to Davis, these artists all share the collective struggle of coming up in Nashville. They don’t want to leave the city’s supportive culture; they don’t want to leave each other. 

And the industry at-large is shifting. According to danny G, a rapper and producer, hip-hop is not the only genre staking claim to the city. Audiences have varying tastes, and are more receptive to attending shows with cross-genre lineups. “They’re seeing that you don’t have to fit into the country or classic pop sound anymore,” he says. “When I came here, I knew a few rappers, but now I know a bunch who want to pursue rap in Nashville. The story is that people don’t want to fit into the Nashville box anymore — and with hop hop, you have to do your own thing.”

The city’s hip-hop scene is marked less by a particular sonic style than it is by collaboration across styles. The scene mirrors Nashville music culture at-large — everyone feels passion for their craft, and this passion quells competitiveness. Recently, danny G collaborated with rapper Daisha McBride on a track called “Run It.” The two make starkly different music independently — danny comes from a pop background, while McBride effortlessly hits verses on-beat with a friendly smirk on her face — but share the desire to support the scene they come from. The song encapsulates what the two say Nashville’s music culture is about: being hungry and working hard. “I wake up a little bright-eyed, meetin’ with a white guy, swear that they the ones with the cash,” McBride raps, presumably about her fellow musician on the track, “And you ain’t gotta be rude, respect my views, green everywhere, Hulk, I smash.”

The industry has also been under scrutiny to increase representation and treat artists from all genres equitably. There was a spark in conversations this June incited by awareness efforts like Blackout Tuesday and the Black Music Coalition’s open letter to the industry, but McBride and Davis say these conversations have taken place in Nashville over time. For hip-hop artists in the city, respect and representation have required persistence, and the continued assertion of their own legitimacy. But if this scene has proved anything, it’s persistence. Hip-hop artists have always been in Nashville, and they’re dead-set on staying.