Young Buck

By Michael McCall

David Brown got the nickname "Young Buck" when, in his early teens, he graduated from hustling change at North Nashville gas stations and car washes to selling small amounts of marijuana and crack cocaine on Buchanan Street near Cumberland View Apartments. Better known as "Dodge City" due to the prevalence of gun violence there, these public housing projects were a place where drug users from all over the city cruised when they were looking for a quick, cheap fix.

David Brown got the nickname "Young Buck" when, in his early teens, he graduated from hustling change at North Nashville gas stations and car washes to selling small amounts of marijuana and crack cocaine on Buchanan Street near Cumberland View Apartments. Better known as "Dodge City" due to the prevalence of gun violence there, these public housing projects were a place where drug users from all over the city cruised when they were looking for a quick, cheap fix.

As Brown tells it, an older street hustler nicknamed Priest pulled him aside, sat him down and asked what a 13-year-old "young buck" was doing turning dime bags of dope on streets. When Brown refused to quit, Priest advised him on how to avoid run-ins with the police or pistol-toting competitors who might not take kindly to a young upstart working their turf. Priest, whose name evokes the respect he drew on the streets, put out the word for others to lay off Young Buck and keep a watchful eye out for him.

Nearly a decade later and still using the name Young Buck, Brown, who eventually took up rapping, has catapulted into mainstream pop culture by selling nearly 300,000 copies of his album, Straight Outta Ca$hville, in the seven days after its Aug. 24 release. Only the new releases by superstars Tim McGraw and R. Kelly topped Young Buck's album in sales last week. In the process, Young Buck has become the best-selling hip-hop act from Nashville to date—indeed, the best-selling African American artist out of Nashville since gospel-pop singer CeCe Winans had a hot streak a decade ago.

Right as the Country Music Hall of Fame is promoting an exhibit honoring the undervalued contributions of Nashville R&B musicians of decades past, a 23-year-old who describes himself as "somebody who comes from nothing—the poorest of the poor" just put Music City on the rap map. Not only that, instead of heeding the advice of those who suggested he hide his ties to Nashville, Young Buck has gone out of his way to let the world know that his hometown has more to offer than country music.

"I never considered not doing it," he says. "I didn't care if somebody thought it was a bad idea. I knew I was going to identify myself as being proud of my city."

From the title of his album to the details he packs into his gangsta rhymes, Young Buck broadcasts that Nashville has a vibrant hip-hop and R&B underground with enough talent to go mainstream and thereby change the world's perception of Music City U.S.A.

From the title of his album to the details he packs into his gangsta rhymes, Young Buck broadcasts that Nashville has a vibrant hip-hop and R&B underground with enough talent to go mainstream and thereby change the world's perception of Music City U.S.A.

"I come from a city that's not known at all for hip-hop," Buck says, talking by phone from Manhattan's Meridien Hotel the day after making his first appearance on MTV's Total Request Live. "To be able to bring the whole world of hip-hop to my city, that's a major deal, man. You know what I'm saying? It's not just me I'm bringing. It's the biggest, largest hip-hop artists of the world that I'm involved with, and the whole industry that's behind that. It's on, now, man. I'm going to make Nashville known for something it ain't never been known for. It's going to shock the world."

Over the course of a 60-minute interview, Young Buck kept coming back to how it's about time a rapper from Nashville got a chance to make a big-budget hip-hop album—and that it's taken too long to happen. On one hand, he wants to lead the way for others, he says. On the other, he wants the city to stop ignoring the gifts of the African American community living within walking distance from some of the best recording studios and the biggest record companies in the world.

"I want people to know that I'm serious about dealing with some issues concerning Nashville," Buck says. "There's a discrimination toward the hip-hop scene, and in a bigger way, a discrimination toward poor people. It don't matter if you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or whatever. I think Nashville has tried to hold hip-hop back a little bit. But now it's going to be so big they can't stop it. I'm only the first. I know for a fact there's going to be more. I'm the one who popped the bubble, but it's a big bubble."