Soul Survivor
Herkules
By Talithia Kelly

Nashville, Tennessee is a not so small city nestled between the Heartland and the South. Some people may view it as a Southern town, but I've always considered Nashville much more than that. To be in Nashville is to be in a sort of limbo; it's a place where dreamers, writers, musicians, and performers flock to walk among the stars. There is a preconceived notion that Nashville is a middle-American Mecca of the music industry, specializing in publishing deals and providing a place for songwriters, especially, and session players to hone their craft. That preconception is true. However, what makes Nashville such a fine breeding ground for industry stalwarts and legendary performers? It's Music City USA, baby, and what separates Nashville from other cities is that music flows in and out of every crevice of every building and life inhabiting its boundaries. That untamed, free-flowing spirit is found in legendary venues, recording studios, and offices that bleed history when you walk inside. In Nashville, the music business is in the air, making this industry town one of the most beloved and unique cities in the US. "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere" is said in New York, but in Nashville, if you make it to the top of the ranks, you've achieved artistic and commercial nirvana.

It is difficult to consider yourself an artist without having Nashville at the top of your contact list. Music Row in Nashville was developed in the 1950s as a center of the recording industry. Business was so brisk that when WSM announcer David Cobb casually referred to Nashville as 'Music City U.S.A.' during a 1950 broadcast, the term stuck. Nashville's stature has clearly grown in the music industry, and any number of New York and Hollywood-based publishing companies set up offices in the city. Yeah, just drive down Sixteenth Avenue South and you will see what I mean. As you turn on Music Square you find all three songwriters association headquarters, BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC. Every major record company has a main office on music row, companies such as Sony Music, RCA, and Columbia just to name a few.

Unlike Washington, D.C. there is no competition between the different genres around town. They all co-exist in a multi-cultural music scene. Country music is the dominating genre here, but Nashville Hip-Hop is a force to be reckoned with. The biggest difference that I have noticed in Music City is that the venues and events are well supported. The event is always filled with young Hip-Hop heads willing to buy a CD or T-shirt. It doesn’t matter if you have an album on Billboard or not, the urban community will give you your shot to make your name.

Much of the business is transacted on the streets, hand-to-hand. Wander down Second Avenue on a weekend night; go to a TSU football game, a gas station, literally anywhere in Nashville and you might run into a local rapper selling his latest release, either out of the trunk of his car or a backpack. Trunk sales are a big part of the local rap economy. “You can sell CDs for $10 a pop out of your trunk,” notes Reece, the head of Nashville rap label Felonious Records. “Or if you go through a distribution company, you may get 7 dollars, so all those $3 help once you add them up.

Take local rapper All-Star for instance, he started in November of 2003 with his first self-released album. All Star recalls how he started making a name for himself. “I pressed them all myself. I filled up a backpack, filled up my trunk. Everywhere I went it was hand-to-hand, selling discs. I did that with my first release, sold about 800 copies. My second release I sold about 3,500 copies. Every time, I’ve managed to escalate. This is my fifth release, and I’ve sold about 20,000 total, of all the releases. I was at club nights, high school and college football games, and basketball games; anywhere there was a chance, I thought there’d be a thousand people there. If I could hit ten percent of them, then that’s something. Then I move on to the next one. After a while, people either get tired of seeing you, or they’ll start picking up on, ‘OK, this dude, he may be up to something.’ ”

It's has become clear to the local rap industry that All-Star is the next big thing to break out of Cashville. Although only 20 years old, he’s has already landed a deal with Cash Money. All-Star’s first Cash Money release Streetball is due out the first quarter of 2006.

Though the harder rap dominates both the airwaves and the local scene, there’s a small but dedicated conscious Hip-Hop community here that pushes on against the grain of popular trends, with acts like Crisis, Fluent Dialects, J-Prodigal, Pow Shadowz, DJ Wick-it, Aposoul and GRITS.

There are a lot more acts like Cadence, Jelly Roll, Glass Joe, Illicit Bizness, Cormat, Paper, Wicked Materiel, Nina Ross,Calico, Aposoul, Pearl, Big Chopper, Lil Vac & Steezie, Beefy, Pure, and Count Bass D some of whom have already tasted some success, others who are newcomers to the Hip-Hop scene.

The record stores provide the geographical and commercial focal points for the local music. New Life Records, Platinum Bound Records, SoundStream Records and Tapes and Cat’s Music all feature a wide variety of local and national Hip-Hop artists. Hang out for a couple minutes and you will see artist dropping off CDs and fliers promoting their new releases. The staff at all these stores know their local rap artists—tell them what you like, and they’ll tell you who to check out.

One way to bring the limelight to Nashville’s underground Hip-Hop scene, as well as the urban underground music scene in general has been the Southern Entertainment Awards, started by Platinum Bound’s DJ Infamous. “I started it to fill a void,” he says. “Most of the awards shows today stem from record sales. The Grammies, the AMAs, don’t pay respect to anything underground. They say they’re not based on sales, but they are.”

So if you plan to venture to Nashville, please step your game up, local artists throughout the city know that it takes work to get noticed. Right now, when it comes to rap, the South is where it’s at. Anyone moderately familiar with the state of rap is familiar with the term Dirty South, a reference to the sounds and scenes in Atlanta, Memphis, Houston, New Orleans, Kentucky and, increasingly, Nashville.