Chuck Indigo
Update, Jan. 9: In light of expected winter weather, the show has been rescheduled for Feb. 15.
“My wife and I, we have two kids, and we have a group of friends that are married as well, with kids,” says Nashville MC and singer Chuck Indigo, who’s taken some time out of his holiday schedule to squeeze in a chat on New Year’s Day. “We all went to a friend’s house out in Murfreesboro last night and did a big thing for the kids.”
Anyone who takes in Indigo’s lyrics or peruses his social media could tell you that family is at the forefront of what he does. When I ask about his show coming up Friday at The Blue Room at Third Man Records, a coy smile stretches across the wordsmith’s face.
“One of the big things I’ll just say is my family will be there in attendance,” he hints. “Like, my entire family.” Indigo pauses for effect before revealing his secret plot like a Bond villain in the third act. “My daughter’s gonna come on stage and do a little one-two with me,” he says, glowing with pride. Indigo’s little girl will make her stage debut with a feature on “Love Me Still,” a mesmerizing earworm from If You Know, You Know…, his 2023 EP.
“She loves that song,” Indigo continues, explaining that his daughter closes her eyes and sings along when the track comes on at home. “She didn’t know that I was singing the song until we were playing it in the house. And my wife is like, ‘You know, that’s Daddy, right?’”
Before taking on the stage name Chuck Indigo as a rapper on the rise in Nashville, the young dad and lyrical wiz played basketball under his birth name, Nick Drake, at Montgomery, Ala.’s Faulkner University.
“I didn’t manage to dodge the athlete-to-rapper pipeline,” Indigo says with a chuckle. I ask the former Faulkner guard why the best rappers to come out of that pipeline were all former basketball stars. Before Cam’ron and Mase were platinum-selling superstars, they were two of the most promising high school hoops phenoms in “The Mecca,” New York City. NBA luminaries like Jason Kidd, Damian Lillard and Shaq all successfully crossed over from the court to the microphone. Even Music City’s own Starlito first made a name for himself playing at Hume-Fogg and on Junior Olympic teams.
“I always kind of looked at basketball like it’s synonymous with art,” Indigo explains. “That’s what drew me to the sport itself. I’m a rhythm person, right? So for me, it’s all about flow and rhythm.”
He also explains how the flow of an MC and the dance of a basketball game each require putting in the effort. Indigo says his rigorous basketball schedule prepared him for the sweat equity he needed to create good music.
“College basketball was like … you wake up early, you go to the gym — get your shots up,” he says. “After the classes, you go to the weight room. Then you go to practice. Then you get more shots up, and then you go.”
The effort Indigo puts in shines through. Tracks like “I CANT” from his recent album UNTIL I GET THERE offer a beautiful fluidity and melodic nature. Indigo’s style sounds effortless and delicate, meticulously crafted to look like it all comes easy for him. I ask whether jazz is a big influence in his craft.
“I was telling somebody this the other day, the influence really comes more so from gospel music,” he says. Indigo grew up singing in the church choir, another community that has nurtured future superstars (see: Usher and Montel Jordan), and one that Indigo credits for his sense of melody and groove. “I didn’t start listening to rap music, or really any other type of genre, until I was a sophomore or junior in high school. … It was straight church, basketball, church, basketball. My mom wouldn’t even give me an MP3 player until my ninth-grade year in high school.”
Released in November, UNTIL I GET THERE has elevated Indigo’s status as an artist. His singles have even gotten big pushes in South America.
“There was a radio station out there that picked ‘THE JUICE’ as a song of the week,” he notes. “And I’ve been seeing those numbers go up in Brazil and Colombia ever since then.”
The album’s sweeping hooks and dreamlike neo-soul underpinnings are reflected on the cover, which features a painting of the rapper floating over the Nashville skyline, complete with a WeGo bus and the twin spires of the AT&T building. Like the late English musician who shares the name Nick Drake, Chuck Indigo’s chief role is as a songwriter. That’s something he shares with other MCs in town, which has a major impact on the character of Music City rap.
“I think it nests Nashville hip-hop artists in a special pocket. Because I’ve always told people — when they say, ‘Well, what’s the Nashville sound?’ We don’t really have one, because this is a songwriter city.”
