Gee Slab
“I study rappers, I study artists, I study musicians,” explains Gee Slab in his unmistakable Middle Tennessee drawl. “And they always say to make your local story connect worldwide. So I always try to make people understand what Nashville is.”
Slab is as Nashville as it gets. Born at Baptist Hospital, the rapper and local hip-hop thought leader proudly shows off his hometown as a badge of honor anytime the opportunity arises. He talks about his years at Pearl-Cohn High School and childhood visits to Opryland with a hint of nostalgia. As a founding member of the Six One Trïbe collective, Slab has a big voice within the local rap world.
He is not the first to pair up the three digits of the city’s original area code, used as shorthand for “Nashville” for decades, with the 15th day of the sixth month. But he and the Trïbe crew have put together Saturday’s 615 Day event at The Basement East — planned as an annual happening, it comes right in the middle of Black Music Month and a few days shy of Juneteenth — as a way to showcase some of the vast wealth of talent that operates outside of the Music Row-sanctioned side of Nashville. It’s also an opportunity for Nashville’s network of hip-hop communities to celebrate the town they come from.
Trïbe headlines this inaugural event with support from two of Nashville’s most gifted MCs, Brian Brown and Sweet Poison. Emcee duties, meanwhile, will be handled by The Voice of Cashville herself: Averianna the Personality, who you can hear in many places including as host of The Voice of Cashville Radio from 6 to 8 p.m. every Thursday on YoCo 96.7 FM.
Brian Brown at Mo Better Blue Room, 8/25/2023
“Gee Slab had been mentioning [performing at 615 Day] to me in passing for almost about a year now,” says Brown. “I couldn’t refuse. Slab was one of the first people to give me or my music a chance around here when I first started out, so when he calls, I def answer.”
Even as an artist who has played stages across the nation, Brown sees rappers from Nashville rarely getting the attention and support they need to succeed. “I’m 10 years in, and folks are still surprised when I tell them I rap,” he says. “For as talented as this place is regarding hip-hop, there’s so few guys that have reached some sort of national spotlight.”
The city’s decision to build I-40 through North Nashville in the 1960s destroyed Black neighborhoods, including the vibrant Jefferson Street entertainment district. It has taken decades of hard work — by folks like Black-owned booking enterprise Lovenoise — to restore and grow even a small portion of the industry infrastructure that builds careers and to make it accessible to Black musicians.
“I don’t even think rappers know how to get in the infrastructure,” says Slab. “I think our job is to try to change it. We have to be disrupters a little bit. You can’t just wait for an opportunity.”
He notes that white and Black people involved in music and the music business don’t face the same kinds of challenges in Nashville.
“For me, it is important that a Black man is starting this,” he says. “We’re just trying to get ourselves heard. Because we know that if it was up to the infrastructure, they would never let us downtown, period. They don’t want us on Broadway.”
Sweet Poison points out that it’s crucial to recognize the achievements of the greater Nashville hip-hop community.
“It’s just very important for the culture — for the city — just to let it be known,” Poison says. “We’ve put in the work over years. … For the ones coming after us, we’re setting a tone — like a blueprint. I feel like the city definitely needed it, and it’s gonna be great even in years to come.”
615 Day highlights Music City rappers and DJs, but also boasts local merchants, food trucks, clothing lines and small businesses from around the city. Fans will even get to experience the live debut of The Beginning of 4EVR, a new eight-track EP that Six One Trïbe will release as part of the festivities.
Gee Slab on the set of 'Lost in the Sauce'
“I have a quote I live by that says, ‘The world is better when an old man plants a tree for shade he may not receive,’” says Slab, emphasizing that the goal is for the celebration to be a platform for future generations of Black creative folks. “It’s a pathway to be on a stage and to get your art heard. I’m trying to create the change I want without complaining about it all the time. I get tired of the complaining about what Nashville doesn’t do—so how about we just try to do?”
Noting how so many musicians are overlooked across a wide range of traditions and genres in his hometown, Slab already has plans to expand 615 Day.
“Beyond me being a rapper, I think it represents the culture of the underrepresented people of Nashville,” Slab says. “Because I’m a rapper — and I identify with hip-hop and R&B and Black popular music — I’m gonna start with hip-hop and rap. Next year, I would love to have a few bands, a couple of pop artists and some rappers and some R&B acts to make it a full-circle thing.”
