Nashville Scene’s Year in Music 2023: The Year in Hip-Hop | Cover Stories

In November, the National Museum of African American Music opened the next installment of This Is Hip-Hop, its ongoing exhibit series marking 50 years of one of America’s most important contributions to culture. The State of Hip-Hop focuses on Nashville’s own rich and deep history of rap, spotlighting several MCs and producers. Seemingly everyone across Music City hip-hop’s panoply of scenes continued the tradition by busting their asses in 2023.

Keeping up with rap collective Six One Trïbe could be a full-time job. Their massive year, which we recognized in our Best of Nashville issue, included traveling to perform at SXSW and Bonnaroo. There was also a slew of singles, albums and videos from individual members (shout-out to Negro Justice and JustVibez’s Art of the Craft) as well as the Trïbe’s second full-length Reset for the Rejects.

Idil Ibrahim’s half-hour documentary “In Her Element,” which aired on BET in February as part of Queen Latifah’s Queen Collective series, broadcast the word about stellar rapper Daisha McBride. The Rap Girl herself kept busy throughout the year, collaborating with Grammy-nominated Atlanta MC 6lack, among much more business.

The Inner Circle crew put together an array of great shows, including August’s Mo Better Blue Room showcase at Third Man. Among the highlights, there were dynamite sets from Tripleplay Squeek and Saucyy Slim that left the crowd hungry for lots more — the sooner we get new releases from them, the better.

Another standout at that show was killer MC and fantastic showman Brian Brown, who’s shared stages all over town with stellar rappers and punk bands in 2023. Brown bookended the year with two outstanding releases: January’s EP Two Minute Drill and November’s Carmine Prophets collab LP BBGonProfit.

Awesome rap EPs came fast and furious this year, from Notes on a Scale III by Ron Obasi to Chuck Indigo’s If You Know, You Know …, Jyou & K.O.N’s collaboration The Boombox and beyond. Spoken Nerd gave us some of his best work yet on Magical Powers; $avvy made experimental moves on Bunny!; and The BlackSon made a multifaceted multimedia project (including music) called Do Something Important. Rashad tha Poet dropped two powerhouse projects: a collab EP with The Beathead called He’s the Producer, I’m the Emcee and A Break From the Trap, the third in his ongoing series of spoken-word collaborations with S-Wrap. SymbaSyd, who comes to us by way of Chicago, took no prisoners with her summer single “Backseat (Pressure).” Lord Goldie seemed to be clearing a path for new work, reissuing her early LPs and dropping fantastic archival material like Trap Conscious 2, a lush reimagining of her 2018 Trap ConsciousEP.

All the while, folks kept very busy behind the scenes — like Tim Gent, who’s been busy building up an arm’s-length list of credits as a composer and lyricist on film and TV projects that are getting his name known far beyond Music City. The artists, producers and others working in Nashville hip-hop today are building on the work of those who came before to make Music City a big part of hip-hop’s next 50 years.