Long before Nashville’s hip-hop scene began to get the wider recognition that it’s been enjoying over the past couple of years, Petty was one of the best known and most respected rappers around. One of the reasons he’s become such a celebrated figure is his prolificacy — it’s not uncommon for him to release several full-length projects in a given year. Another is his dynamic stage presence. Of course, COVID-19 put a stop to live music in early 2020, and it’s been nearly two years since he’s set foot on a stage.
“Performing has definitely slowed down a lot,” Petty tells the Scene, stepping outside to hop on the phone on an unseasonably warm February afternoon. “Whether it’s just been things not lining up or just reading the room and realizing it’s not a good time. I like to put together shows on my own, so it’s, ‘Do you want to take the risk of putting up your own bread to fund an event that may or may not have the same turnout?’ ”
On Thursday, Petty will co-headline a stacked show at Mercy Lounge with FU Stan and Namir Blade. The bill, assembled and presented by Black Sheep’s Society Enterprises, also includes up-and-comers SeddyMac, VibeOut and CamFerg, and AC Noel serves as host. Looking ahead to the show, the master MC plans to focus his performance on recent songs.
“Putting together my set list was a lot more challenging than usual,” he says. “I have all these extra songs to choose from. I just really want to perform new songs. Not being onstage gave me a lot more time to think and just be more intentional with everything.”
One project among the several he released in 2021 would provide him enough material for a lengthy residency gig without repeating a single tune. On each Friday of 2021, he released a new track. The series — appropriately enough, called #53 Fridays — was one of the year’s best and most interesting hip-hop projects, and the Scene called it “appointment listening” when recognizing Petty for Best Hip Hop Hustle in 2021’s Best of Nashville issue. The tracks vary, sometimes wildly, in style and subject matter. Some songs are heavily influenced by old-school jazz and soul and draw an intimate and confessional flow out of Petty; others lean more toward a spare and menacing trap sound, supporting him as he lyrically struts and flexes. There are even some melancholy piano ballads. The clear through line is Petty’s steadfast commitment to pushing himself and his artistry.
“It helped me, mentally, to get out of my own way more,” he says of #53 Fridays. “Because I feel like, as artists, we don’t want to release something until it’s perfect. Or at least perfect in our eyes. Most of those records — if not all of them — they had just a light mix on them but they were not really mastered. Sometimes just letting things not be perfect can make you start to develop different feelings about your approach to music. It felt like a lot of weight was lifted just by trusting the music and putting it out.”
In addition to beefing up his set list, that batch of tracks has Petty looking forward to releasing a new proper album. It would follow Bubba, a 2019 LP he made in memory of his grandfather. Petty is excited to start the next phase of his career, but he says he’s in no rush to make major moves. While he let go of some of his perfectionism with #53 Fridays, the pandemic also gave him space to slow down. In being forced to take it a bit easier, he realized he could be patient with his projects — spending a little more time, perhaps, to polish a bar to perfection or get the vibe of his delivery just right. For Petty, being patient and insisting on perfection aren’t intertwined.
“When just ‘work, work, work’ is the most important thing, I miss out on a lot,” he says. “I don’t want my music to reflect that. I don’t want my music to sound like the things I’m missing out on. That’s something that I can hear in my music, because I know what I could be putting in. Even if it’s received well … I know I can raise my bar a little more and strive for better quality.”
At the moment, the spotlight on Nashville hip-hop is the brightest it’s been yet. This array of communities within a community has been celebrated well beyond the city limits for its diversity of style and wealth of talent, which only seems to grow by the year. Petty’s work has played an integral role in this rising tide, in part because of his love for collaborating with a wide range of producers and other artists, as you can hear across the #53 Fridays project.
“It’s been dope to be part of [the local rap scene’s growth],” he says. “It’s been even better just to witness it from an active perspective. And to see where it was when I first came in, where it is now and how it’s pushed its limits and turned into something that nobody could have imagined 10 years ago. We had a time when the sound was more similar, and now we have a variety of artists. You got people like Reaux Marquez, Quez Cantrell, Gee Slab, FU Stan — it’s a bunch of different styles. Now I feel like everybody has a different quality to their own work. And I feel like that’s the best thing to witness.”
Ultimately, Petty’s newfound sense of freedom and new opportunities to get in front of an in-person audience have him excited in a very distinctive way.
“You know when you were a kid, and you were about to draw and had your pencil real sharp, everything’s feeling right, like, ‘What am I gonna do?’ There wasn’t a sense of worry. It was an inspirational feeling. That’s the best way I can describe it.”
