Six One Trïbe
Even if you’ve been told how to get to recording studio EastSide Manor, it’s easy to miss the driveway, hidden in plain sight along a residential street in Inglewood among canes of towering bamboo that look like they’re blocking the wind for another yard.
Make your way down the curved stretch of gray pea gravel, and eventually a grand residence reveals itself. Walking up from my parking spot on a particularly warm October afternoon, I no longer feel like I’m anywhere near Gallatin Pike, but rather in a secluded artist commune in some exotic locale. A friendly group greets me from their seats around a long picnic table, and audio engineer Aaron Dethrage, who’s been texting me to coordinate this meetup, offers a welcoming handshake. He walks me across a large stone patio, past a soot-stained firepit and into the facility that, among many other things, serves as home base for Nashville hip-hop collective Six One Trïbe. The room is full — of people on nearly every surface that can double as a seat, of snack foods spread across an octagonal table, of recording gear flanking two large mixing boards.
This is where the group and their many collaborators have been at work for a long time, creating an array of projects including their debut full-length album Trïbe Over Everything, which they’ll release Friday. It doesn’t take long to understand that Six One Trïbe takes the term “collective” very seriously, and describing themselves as a family who chooses each other is a common refrain. Most of the contributors to the album are in the control room with me. The first to say hello is Quai, a rapper and producer who has his own album due soon. To his left, Gee Slab leans against a mixing board. Slab is the co-founder of the collective in a formal sense — he and Dethrage launched the LLC together — but he’s also a producer and the rapper that listeners hear first on the album’s lead track, “They On Notice.”
“A word we use a lot around here is ‘ecosystem,’ ” Slab says in his robust Middle Tennessee drawl. He comes across like the group’s wise elder statesman. “It’s just an ecosystem of creativity — pushing one another to be better, over and over again. And through that, people shine bright in their own light.”
Before my visit, three singles have been released in the run-up to the album: the driving “Wholotta,” the grooving, nimble “We the Wave” and the kinetic “Carbon Copy.” Combined, there are four producers and 13 rappers on the mic on these three tracks alone. Every cut on Trïbe Over Everything has at least three MCs, while some tracks feature as many as eight. The artists are fairly disparate in style, but their familiarity with one another is the connective tissue that makes the work cohesive. The continuity from track to track is like a beautiful stew, where each chef has chosen specific spices that complement the ingredients everyone else is bringing. The resulting flavor is distinctly Southern and uniquely Nashville.
“Different flavors coming into the same pipe,” says Tripgod F’RF’R (read: “for real, for real”). He’s a jovial jokester, and he’s all over Trïbe, both on the microphone and the beats. He greets everyone who steps through the door with a hug and a smile that extends the entire width of his face. “We’re showing that Nashville is that new melting pot of flavor. All these artists that are around me right now are the great flavors that make this dish so outstanding.”
“When you count up everybody who’s worked on this project,” Dethrage notes, “like everybody, everybody — it’s like 55 or 60 people attached to the project at this point.”
I ask for a headcount on Trïbe’s active rappers, and the soft answer is about 16. But there are about as many collaborators functioning as featured guests on tracks across the album and their various solo projects.
“It’s more of a label-slash-production company,” says Slab. “I can’t just say it’s just artists, because that would be unfair to everyone else who contributes to what we do.”
Continuing around the loose circle in the control room, rapper and fashion designer 3van 9rey sits next to Negro Justice, who currently holds the Best of Nashville title belt in the Hip-Hop Album category. Chosen Family, the solo album he released in the spring, features most of the Trïbe crew. HB Mandela never announces his role in the group, but rather his enthusiasm to be involved. “It’s a beautiful thing to be in here,” Mandela says. “And a beautiful time with all these great artists — something as authentic as it gets.” To my right is wordsmith and guitarist BLVCKWIZZLE, who radiates confidence as he introduces himself. It’s clear that the members of the crew are each other’s biggest fans.
To my right sit PesoTaxin and Mack, the young duo behind Redeye Films, who function as the video production team within the Trïbe orbit. The whole group is passing around a tablet displaying stills from the cult-themed video for the track “Same Beast, Different Monsters,” shot around EastSide Manor (and co-directed by all3y3z) the night before. As the photos go from hand to hand, each member expresses so much admiration for the work the others do. Everyone on the team is an equal — rappers, producers, designers, editors — each just as important as the other.
It’s more like a church than a playground here,” says Mandela. “I feel like this is a healing place. I don’t even know how to put it. These people come here, and I’ve learned to love every one of them like family.”
