WonderTwins
Nashville rap and R&B have both seen dramatic rises in popularity in the past few years, earning praise from national outlets like NPR and Complex and catching the attention — and dollars — of major players like Prescription Songs and Roc Nation. Most of this attention has focused on the city’s wealth of artist and songwriting talent. But an equally important part of the scene has flown largely under the radar: its producers.
A.B. Eastwood, a producer, musician and DJ known to friends and collaborators simply as A.B., knows this firsthand. A frequent go-to for artists like Tim Gent and Brian Brown, Eastwood reached out to the Scene suggesting a piece highlighting the important work these behind-the-scenes players do. In addition to the lack of spotlight on producers, he cited the scene’s rapid growth and growing attention as reason for celebrating those who work behind the boards.
“It has made me want to really make it all count,” Eastwood says of Nashville hip-hop’s growth. “It’s made it worth something. We’re getting a better image of the things we want to do and how realistic they look. There’s really something on the line now.”
In his pitch, Eastwood named a number of producers in town doing great work, including Jack Keller, LacMan, Chris “Dirty Rice” Mackey and Darren King. He also pointed to production duo WonderTwins. The real-life twins, Jeremy and Jermond Prince, have worked with Kiya Lacey, Bryant Taylorr and Mike Floss, among many others.
Speaking via phone, Jeremy Prince outlines the duo’s bona fides. He explains how growing up in a musical family — their grandfather played piano with Ray Charles and their grandmother played piano for Dionne Warwick, among their many other accomplishments — inspired the brothers to create beats and tracks of their own.
Jeremy started making beats in middle school on their father’s keyboard, eventually realizing that it was his passion. He started college at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for sportscasting while Jermond attended the University of Tennessee at Knoxville for architecture. Both eventually transferred to MTSU to pursue degrees in music business.
“We didn’t go out in college,” Jeremy Prince says. “We were always in our room, perfecting and getting better and better. And we’ve been doing it since.”
He is one of many people who recognize that this moment in Nashville hip-hop is not just a trend or a fluke, but rather the product of both the quality and the quantity of talent in the region. Now that the local hip-hop community is getting noticed more outside the city, there’s increased recognition of our homegrown talent in genres aside from just country, rock and Americana.
“There wasn’t much exposure on a big scale,” he says. “Now that people are starting to see these artists and producers that are actually getting placements and things like that, they’re starting to recognize that there is talent here. I feel like Nashville has been underrated.”
For many producers in Nashville, making beats and tracks is just one small part of the work they do. As Eastwood explains, there are producers in town who shoot photos, make music videos, play in live bands and much more. In other words, producers have to hustle just as hard as — if not harder than — anyone else to turn their craft into a living. And they don’t just work on hip-hop and R&B. As Eastwood’s manager, Zack Cobb of Syzygy Management, tells the Scene of Eastwood: “He’s genre-less. He’s not a hip-hop producer. He makes music.”
“When I was in Florida I was primarily a beat maker,” Eastwood says. “When I came back here, I saw people who were producing but also directing shows. Ron Gilmore — he’s a musician, but he also tours with artists. They just really do a lot. I know in other places some producers do a lot too, but in Nashville it’s really common.”
This do-it-together mentality is very much in line with the close-knit, highly collaborative nature of the broader Nashville hip-hop, pop and R&B scene. Prince believes this quality has helped elevate the community from its local roots to national recognition.
“I’m glad that everyone is starting to come together,” Prince says. “At first, everybody was out in their own lane and no one was really coming together. Everyone had their own little clique. Now we’re starting to see everyone become one big community and work together, almost like Atlanta.”
When asked what goals he has for the production community, Eastwood says he hopes for more venues and events in town that serve fans of hip-hop and R&B, citing the wildly popular long-running dance party The Boom Bap as an example of the demand for more rap-centric events. He also wants to see real, meaningful collaboration between the hip-hop and country music industries.
“I hope that we can get more involvement and opportunities from Music Row,” says Eastwood. “There’s guys in town to meet the needs of everything they’re looking for, but have never gotten the opportunity.”
A.B. Eastwood
Prince echoed Eastwood’s sentiment. “They have a lot more exposure and resources that could help us get recognized on a national level,” he says. “With country music as big as it is in Nashville, having that influence on Music Row that’s generated success for country could do the same for other genres, like hip-hop and R&B. That way, Nashville will have diversity and not just be known as one genre.”
Author and Scene contributor Andrea Williams has spoken on this topic in various formats, including a Twitter thread about a Black producer-musician friend who left Nashville for better opportunities in Los Angeles. Her friend’s experience hit close to home for Williams. Her husband’s time as a producer and musician in Nashville has been marked by a striking lack of access to the commercial country music industry, which has famously appropriated hip-hop music for years.
“All of these things that Black people have been doing forever — and I can’t stress this enough — what people think is new here [in country music], with the ‘track guy’ era, is so wildly behind, it’s bananas,” she says, laughing. “It’s a mind-blowing thing that Nashville is as behind as it is. … Publishers are signing young white guys who do not have a clue how to program tracks. They are getting signed to deals so that they can develop and learn how to do this, when there’s all these people out here who already know.”
“One of the problems is that there’s not an ecosystem that supports Black producers or urban music producers in Nashville,” says Eric Holt, co-founder of the concert promotions group Lovenoise who also co-founded Syzygy with Cobb. “Some of the gap between Music Row and urban music just has to do with relationships. We’ve been trying to build relationships so that they’re aware of this other talent that’s in Nashville. And there are tons of entities putting in that work to shorten that gap, like Nashville Is Not Just Country Music, and D’Llisha [Davis] over at 2L’s. But the gap is there for sure.”
Eastwood also cites a lack of familiarity between the two scenes as contributing to the disconnect between Nashville rap and country. He suggests that producers who already have connections to Music Row could do wonders for the rap scene by bringing in other producers and collaborators for what he calls “trust sessions.”
“It’s like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a guy I want to bring into this session, just to show you what kind of talent there is in town,’ ” he explains. “It’s stuff where guys who already have the opportunity need to bring guys in. It’s not a talent show, like, ‘How about this guy?’ It’s about building trust. I think once that starts, and once those opportunities become more available, it’ll flow.”
Holt and Cobb — who together manage Eastwood, Gent and Taylorr — are actively working to make Nashville a bigger hub for hip-hop and R&B. They’re hoping to foster a culture in which Nashville artists and producers have access to opportunities in all genres, as well as a culture that will draw artists from outside Nashville to come here to work with local talent. They also don’t want that local talent, like Williams’ friend, to leave for other cities.
“On the recording side, it’s very cookie-cutter in town,” Cobb says. “11 a.m. to 3 p.m., then you have to make it home before the traffic hits. When we go to other towns, that’s not the vibe. There’s nowhere that’s open from 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. that you can be yourself in and make a home in Nashville. That’s a big part of it, too.”
Cobb and Holt are looking into opening a studio and performance space that would serve artists and producers in a way that better suits their needs. They’re also exploring investment opportunities with major music industry players who the pair say they can’t name right now.
“Cultivating the out-of-town relationships to [encourage artists to] come here moving forward, versus us going there, is important,” Holt says. “We do a lot of sessions in Atlanta and Memphis and other places, and want to build up facilities so that we can have those sessions in Nashville. The culture isn’t here, so that just means there’s an opportunity to build a culture.”
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