Creativity, Collaboration, Community | Nashville’s Hip-Hop Scene Shows Out at Deep Tropics Festival
Evan Dale // Sep 3, 2021
The setting at first felt ghostly and underwhelming, devoid of people and music before the festival’s start mid-afternoon on a Friday at the tail end of August in Nashville, Tennessee. The heat was sweltering, the humidity suffocating, and the shade and water stations acted as the only oases from the climate in a state that still holds so many Summertime mass congregations of artists and fans, from Bonnaroo to Deep Tropics. This was the latter. In the Music City, this – Deep Tropics – is also consistently a vibrant exhibition of so much of the music that Nashville isn’t outright known for on a radio-reaching platform – yet. But, if the energy in orbit around Deep Tropics’ minimalistic secondary stage called Congo – tucked into a corner of the grounds, sparsely decorated with tropical houseplants, and accidentally cut with bear-trapping holes – is a sign of things to come, Nashville’s hip-hop scene is a powerful force just beginning to peak its wide-ranging glimpse out from the underground, with its eyes set on the top.
Even soundcheck brought in a crowd. The free-flowing, poetic nature of local rapper, The BlackSon’s fiery lyricism merged with a setting where the wildly different yet tightly knit hip-hop artists, management, friends, photographers, and videographers from the city funneled in to set up shop. Loud bass, humility, and niceties set the stage with a brimming sense of community, but when the performances actually got underway, anyone and everyone involved – from the artists to the fans – brought the Congo stage crashing down with explosive élan.
It all starts with the music. For those keen to the hip-hop and Neo-Soul centric Nashville underground, the two-day lineup at the Congo stage was one to be witnessed. Of course, the roster didn’t include everyone worth speaking on, but it provided nonetheless a spanning and beaming spotlight onto the range, the talent, and the passion that exists in the city. After The BlackSon spent his set time torrenting onlookers with a curated blend of thought-provoking penmanship, rumbling register, and high-energy, all atop a jazz-foundation thanks to saxophonist and transcendent musician in his own right, AyyWillé, pensive yet unendingly dynamic experimental hip-hop force with a signature soulful nuance, Reaux Marquez changed things up. A carefully selected setlist pulled from the masterpiece of his 2021 album, NO ROADS, provided anyone watching with a balanced understanding not only of the project, but of the artist himself. Subdued even while dropping incomparably paced and thought-out bars; seemingly introspective even as he ignites a crowd’s mind and body, Reaux is one of a kind, and his Deep Tropics set – even while the Bordaeux wordsmith was still recovering from an Achilles injury – was a special moment for anyone watching. Namir Blade – an artist whose sound, especially when taking into consideration 2020 album, Aphelion’s Traveling Circus, which is experimental and founded in concept – brought a particularly immersive vigor to his set, backed by longtime collaborator Jordan Webb. Wildly meandering cadence and an incalculable knack at storytelling put a crowd headed to the main stage for the night in the right mindset to immerse themselves in the atmospheric pace curated by the global list of top-tier DJ’s.
Click the photos above to open the full gallery from each individual artist.
And by the time that same crowd returned the next day, they were in for yet another rangy and rousing collection of sets that define the sonic expanse of what Nashville is bringing to hip-hop and beyond. AB Eastwood - producer to many local names and consistently found spinning late nights on the rooftop of local Broadway venue, Acme - got it started. Conjoining a slew of undeniable hits to the tune of his own mix and own sound, on the second day of Deep Tropics it was his blendaline confluence at the intersections of hip-hop and electronic production that propagated the crowd. By the time art-school cool, experimental, and unendingly charismatic $avvy hit the stage, the crowd was a wave-pool of energy ready to be released. His own crew, every other hip-hop oriented clique in Nashville, and a gathering of early admitees to the Saturday Deep Tropics grounds absolutely blew the roof off the Congo stage, begging for more space and a better designed one at that in the future. This local talent, after all, won’t be so local for long - headed to their own main-staging tours in the not so distant future. And on the subject, the next two and last two Nashville emcees to perform may be some of the best existing examples of stars on their respective imminent rises. Brian Brown brought the same poetic ubiquity, storytelling effortlessness, and high-key Southern vibes to the stage that likewise made his 2020 album, Journey, one of the most unique and ultimately necessary hip-hop collections in recent memory. Falling through a stage-top hole at one point, the man didn’t even take a breath from his verse, instead weaving in off-the-top one-liners about what had just happened before removing his foot from the jam, jumping back off-stage into the crowd, and continuing his set’s barrage of lyrical dynamism and melodic cool. Tim Gent, too, put on a bullish exhibition of raw poetic talent and refined performative expertise to the tune of his space as an OG to the quickly budding scene. The poetics never took a moment to rest.
Click the photos above to open the full gallery from each individual artist.
And yet, through all of the applaudable performance; through the waves of ultimately variable sonic stylings brought to the Congo stage by way of so many unique artists bringing their respective renaissance towards an oncoming evolution in hip-hop, community and collaboration are what made it all so euphorically successful. There is undying mutuality in the support of the rising Nashville hip-hop spectrum. A tight-knit collective of so many smaller factions in the scene, all creatives, collaborators, family, friends, and fans, came together to perform and to back everyone else around them that, too, rely on that same collaboration within the community to shine an ever-more global light on their creativity.
Keep an eye out for what each and every artist who performed at the Congo stage are up to next. A lot more shows and releases in the works.
