Written by: Oliver Heffron

While it’s fun to go out and dance to loud, popular music, the standard night out is not the best venue for appreciating your favorite subgenre. 

Tony Williams plans to provide a new space for Nashville, starting the vol. 1 project to host events that celebrates musical exploration and provide a space for personal connection by celebrating one subgenre at a time.

Vol. 1’s first event, “4r tha homies,” hosted on December 9th at cë gallery, explored and celebrated the subgenre of lofi hip-hop, alternative rap, and beat culture. 

As a producer and avid fan of lofi beats, Williams wanted to bridge a scattered community of fellow beatmakers and SoundCloud enthusiasts to get together and appreciate their shared passion in person since it’s so often only communicated one-on-one with a keyboard. 

“4r tha homies” features three black artists (visual artist DUCKTAPE [4700], DJ Afrosheen, and producer Burnie Amsterdam) alongside three black vendors (prop and production house No Use Market, boutique fashion and vintage shop FIT(S) BY. FRANCIS, and smoking accessories brand Cruel Gyal) from Nashville and Memphis, creating the comfortable, homey environment associated with lofi hip-hop while supporting local artists and businesses. 

Creator and curator Tony Williams sat down with Nuance for a virtual interview to talk about his inspiration for vol. 1, his debut event, “4r tha homies,” and the mission for the project going forward. 

For Williams, the inspiration and driving force behind vol. 1 is to create a new, more communal space for appreciating music that doesn’t get played on the dancefloor but deserves a setting more comforting and intimate:

“I really want music exploration and music appreciation to be at the forefront… I don’t feel like there’s enough events where you can be immersed in a genre that you’ve never heard before.”

Growing up in Knoxville, TN, Williams accredits his early love for music to his parents’ “solid” music taste but soon found himself wanting more variety. Growing up during the internet age, he remembers falling down a rabbit hole of Madlib and J Dilla mixtapes and eventually falling in love with the producer-centric vision of LA’s Brainfeeder Records, spearheaded the experimental, multimedia visionary Flying Lotus:

“I just became interested in the people behind the scenes who like would actually make the sound aspect of the music rather than the lyrics because I’ve always been attracted to how things sound more than like what people are saying.”

During college, his passion for underground music got him a job directing the music selection at his college, MTSU’s radio station, where Williams got his first experience hosting events around musical appreciation, and the concept for Vol. 1 began to percolate.

As Williams grew accustomed to the typical event around Nashville as his career developed in the industry, Williams found himself time and time again at the same types of events around Nashville:

“A lot of events tend to fall into a few categories, which the two main ones are: party events; where people get fucked up and you’re not here to talk to people; you’re there to dance until you can’t and suddenly it’s like 3am. Or, it’s a concert, where you’re engaged with the music that’s happening purely, and then you go home.”

Williams plans to bring a new type of event to the table with vol. 1, creating a more conversation-friendly atmosphere that’s carefully curated around a particular subgenre and its contingent cultures: 

“I enjoy discussing music lowkey; I enjoy engaging with people about things like where I can actually hear them, but I also enjoy a vibe that’s very specific and fitting for the environment I’m in.”

For vol. 1’s first event, Williams wanted to centralize his personal passion for lofi hip-hop, carefully designing a night that celebrates the subgenre’s homely atmosphere and anime aesthetics:

“I just really wanted people to be able to feel like more or less a third home when they come to this event. Even the set design is like going to kind of mimic a living room to give that comfort that you feel at home; where you can just pull up, maybe some friends pull up you can just chat, hear some music, play some video games… to be comfortable and engage with people in a way that’s not just on a surface level.”

Combining the cozy lofi aesthetics with his vision of a music event where people can actually hear each other, Williams describes vol. 1 and “4r Tha Homies” as aiming to provide a social event for people not always keen for a typical night-out:

“We definitely want to cater to folks who are maybe a little more introverted, maybe like, not leaving the house for stuff as often.”

Visual artist DUCKTAPE (4700) provided impressive imagery with the “AZ. 4r Ur Consideration” live music video compilation to start the night.

Then, being the rare artist who knew more MF Doom songs than Williams, DJ Afrosheen, known for her upbeat house sets, leaned into her love for alternative hip-hop with her first hip-hop set, a tribute to the late great: “B1. 4r DOOM.”

Producer Burner Amsterdam, formerly Williams’ MTSU radio-co host, will be closing out the live sets by premiering a beat tape that Williams says he thought was so good, “I basically forced him to play it for people.”

“4r tha homies” rounded out the other cultural aspects of lofi with their local vendors. No Use Market, a frequent production collaborator with Williams, designed a cozy living room space specifically for chilling out with its array of soft bean bag chairs, video game set-ups, and writing stations for getting down creative thoughts.

Boutique fashion and vintage shop FIT(S) BY. FRANCIS offered select clothing from a pop-up that resembled a bedroom closet while smoking accessories brand Cruel Gyal sold cones, trays, and rolling papers since lofi hip-hop and weed culture have a vital intersection. 

The carefully tailored environment helped foster a connection between people interested in lofi, as William fondly reflects on the conversations he overheard:

“I heard people being like, ‘Oh, this is my favorite song by Zelooperz,’ and then someone else’s like ‘Nah,, you gotta hear this.’ It was people putting each other on to stuff that they maybe wouldn’t have heard because you’re not going to hear that stuff out very often.”

He explains that those conversations are the aim of vol. 1, hoping to create a space where passionate music subreddit-style discourse can play out in person and build a real, in-person community: “It was like the conversations that you have in the message boards or just between friends, your center your house, and it was great to hear those conversations happening in-person.

While lofi and alternative hip-hop will be the focus of vol. 1’s first event, Williams envisions the project diving into more underrepresented subgenres in the future, like world music or a Jazz night he’s particularly excited about: “I just really want to hear Alice Coltraine in public.”

Williams wants to build a community centered around musical exploration. He believes there are more than enough people in the music city like him, who grew up on the internet, perpetually crate-digging in an endless search for unfamiliar sounds. 

Recently awarded a grant by Nashville’s Metro Arts, Williams plans his new resources to realize his vision for vol. 1 by curating one subgenre-centric event at a time. By translating his passion for musical exploration into building a community of like-minded artists and music lovers, Williams hopes to set a new standard for a night out in Nashville: 

“I want people to engage with music in a way they haven’t before, at least in Nashville…I really plan to have these events have a quality and intention that I feel like people may not be prepared for, but I’m really hoping to have people walk away with like a new expectation of what they want to see in their live events. And the quality they expected in their bins moving forward. I’m hoping to set a bar.”