R.A.P. Ferreira at Soulfolks Records and Tapes
If you head up to Madison via Gallatin Pike and hang a right on East Old Hickory Boulevard — just before the intersection with Old Hickory Boulevard proper — you’ll find Soulfolks Records and Tapes. The new shop serves up hard-to-find hip-hop albums and hosts some of Music City’s more innovative music programming. Soulfolks, a welcome and needed addition to Nashville’s assortment of indie record shops, is the brainchild of R.A.P. Ferreira, a widely traveled but locally based MC and producer looking to bring a new community hub to the city’s vibrant rap scene.
Ferreira first put down roots in Nashville in 2019, and this iteration of Soulfolks opened for business in early May. Since then, Ferreira says the shop has already attracted a crew of regular customers, as well as vinyl-loving out-of-towners hoping for their next big score. He attributes the latter phenomenon especially to the shop’s location in Nashville, a more central locale than the store’s original location in Biddeford, Maine.
“I’m already getting a lot more people who are on their way to something else stopping by,” Ferreira tells the Scene, chatting in the shop on a sunny Monday afternoon. “It’s been great in terms of foot traffic. I like taking that left-hand path where people are like, ‘What would bring you there?’”
The Soulfolks retail space is compact but deftly curated, taking up the front room of a small storefront. The several crates lining the front windows boast albums from artists like MF DOOM and J Scienide, with a healthy dose of local music up for grabs too. In the shop’s front case, there are some musical rarities and unusual finds, like a Gakken Toy Record Maker Kit, which is a tabletop lathe cutter from Japan.
Curation is key to the Soulfolks enterprise, so much so that Ferreira even has albums — which he’s reluctant to name — from his own personal collection available for sale. He takes a communal approach to sourcing stock, taking care to buy from other indie shops and touring artists when he’s out on the road in support of his own music career.
“I’ve been a touring artist for 12 years, maybe,” he explains. “From doing this that long, I know so many thousands of artists, so I try to buy all of the vinyl I encounter from other artists on the road. Sliding through other shops, it’s always fun to be a representative of Soulfolks, like, ‘I got this little shop in Nashville.’ Nine-and-a-half times out of 10, that’s the phrase that gets, ‘Oh, well check this out.’ We’re doing something the internet can’t do. The internet can’t fuck with my curation and my ability to travel.”
Soulfolks Records and Tapes
Ferreira took that philosophy a step further recently when he traveled to Tokyo and Osaka to shop for LPs and tapes — as well as those awesome little lathe cutters. In those cities, he found a passionate community of like-minded music lovers, as well as, as he puts it, “a lot of stuff that, until you saw it, you didn’t know you needed it.” He brought some of that back.
“The connoisseurship is very high,” he says of Japan. “Deeply impressive to me was the desire to not just have music or play it — but to understand it, to identify it. Even from that distance, the perception of authenticity was important. Over there, the execution of the culture is so seamless. At the rap show, they still had b-boys and b-girls dancing. There were people sketching graffiti in their piecebooks. There were a lot of vinyl DJs. It was really cool to see, especially so far away.”
That’s the kind of energy Ferreira hopes to bring to Soulfolks, which also plays host to live music and community-minded events. Walk through the shop’s front room and you’ll find additional space for hosting artists and listeners, with a custom mural painted by Ferreira’s friends. While Ferreira admits he has to keep the lights on, making money is low on the priority list. Most events at Soulfolks are free and all-ages.
R.A.P. Ferreira at Soulfolks Records and Tapes
“I want to be able to have a place for music that doesn’t require money,” he explains. “At least on the face of it. And that doesn’t revolve around consuming alcohol or the lights being off. We’re inviting an almost scholastic energy to the record store. I grew up in maybe the last generation that could still go to the park and rap. An idea like that almost seems twee, right? But there’s no place you can just do your music outside where the police wouldn’t accost you at some point. This is my little attempt at that.”
The next happening at Soulfolks is July 7: the first Nashville incarnation of its Beat Invitational, a free community event highlighting talented beatmakers from all over the country, and a few from other nations too. The shop has tapped 57 participants from the pool of applicants for the gathering, during which creators will play their best beats for an eager audience of fans and potential collaborators. There is no contest or winner, just a communal celebration of music and culture.
“It’s an opportunity to bring your music, sell your music, be around music,” he says. “It’s all about giving people their props. For some people, it will be their first time playing beats in public. We want it to be a supportive atmosphere, something that you fall in love with.”
