One morning in November, producer Ryder Johnson arrived at the Nashville offices of his music publisher, Prescription Songs, with his laptop and external hard drive, ready to get down to the business of beatmaking.
First, though, his A&R reps present him with paperwork.
“It’s to say that we’re splitting everything equally, so nobody can get screwed over, basically,” Johnson summarizes, as he flips through the papers. “It’s just to protect everybody, and I think that’s a very, very good idea.”
There are real commercial stakes for the collaboration ahead, so being up front about the terms of how potential publishing income will be divided is just practical.
Johnson’s one of nearly two dozen music-makers scheduled to spend a few days together, holed up in various studios in predetermined groups of three or four. Their efforts will be guided by a collective assignment: create tracks tailored to well-known rappers or suited to other projects.
Plenty of hip-hop hits originate at songwriting camps like this — but seldom in Nashville. A song that Johnson worked on at a Los Angeles camp landed in the Fast & Furious franchise. His fellow Prescription writers Tim Gent and Bryant Taylorr — both fixtures of Nashville’s hip-hop scene — trekked to South Florida for a camp devoted to soundtracking Issa Rae’s HBO Max series “Rap S—.”
‘We want to give them a real way to make money‘
Prescription staffers Anay Richardson and Kelly White want to provide greater opportunities for Nashville-based rap and R&B specialists right here.
“Bigger things,” White specifies, “rather than just small writers’ rounds. We really want to put the spotlight on the talent and give them a real way to make money and get their name out there.”
Drumatized, a music company started by rap superproducer and MTSU grad Tay Keith, seemed like the ideal partner. Keith built his studio in Nashville in 2023, and he’s already begun to use it for sessions with ascendant stars like Sexyy Red. His co-CEO Cambrian Strong points to that as a sign of the company’s local investment.
“We’ve been heavily planning,” says Strong, “and specifically figuring out ways we could be more impactful in Nashville. We just came to the conclusion that we should do a camp with Prescription, to start somewhere.”
To set it up, the two teams drew on their rosters and networks, arranging for A&R people who work with established acts, including Houston melodic rapper Don Toliver, to describe the type of new material they’re seeking during daily virtual briefings.
On the first morning of the camp, Richardson took thorough notes as Toliver’s rep addressed the group over Zoom. “Don’s basically taking hooks,” she translates, scanning what she’d typed.
In other words, the writers would need to leave room for Toliver to add his own verses.
“He’s in his rock star era,” Richardson continues, “so he wants really hard-hitting drums, turn-up records.”
Richardson paired the camp participants according to their skillsets and the stylistic focus of each session. “You’re basically playing, like, matchmaker,” she says, “so you have to know personalities. I feel like you have to know everyone’s strengths, and then, you have to know, ‘Is it the best use of their time?’”
‘What does that record sound like?‘
Johnson grabs prepackaged snacks from a bowl in the office kitchen, on his way to a separate building that houses the studio he’ll be working in. There, he’s joined by Drumatized producer DJ Meech — they’ve teamed up before — and a pair of artists neither of them have met.
DB Bantino, in town from Washington D.C., and Casper Sage, a local carrying on the ruminative alt-R&B lineage of Frank Ocean, will focus on crafting vocal hooks.
Meech and Johnson take turns on the laptop, shaping foreboding, minor-key synth and guitar samples into a dramatic, crescendoing pattern.
“What I’m trying to do, Ryder, is pick the melody that switch up the most,” Meech says between bites of his fast food lunch.
They tinker with song structure for well over an hour, trying to match the length of the new track with Toliver’s past releases. Then, they amp up the energy by adding a bass drop and muscular trap drums.
Meanwhile, Bantino and Sage sit in opposite corners of the room, quietly testing melodic ideas and typing lyrics into their phones.
Then, Sage compares notes: “Really, it’s like, how do we capture the experience that people want to hear on a Friday night?”
“Like an endless night,” Bantino adds.
“Yeah,” says Sage. “What does that record sound like?”
Bantino sits down at the laptop to engineer while Sage starts laying down a vocal part. He does multiple takes, then hands the mic to Bantino, who adds his own moody melody lines.
Destination unknown
For a couple of these collaborators, songwriting camps are still pretty new, and for the rest, the new part is doing this in Nashville.
By the end of the afternoon, they’ve each contributed to the making of a song that might have a future.
After the camp wraps, the Drumatized and Prescription teams listen to all the music and begin pitching it.
One track that Toliver’s A&R guy likes features a writer who wasn’t originally supposed to take part in the camp, independent Nashville emcee Seddy Mac. He’d received a text inviting him to a session by mistake, meant for a Florida artist with a very similar name. Still, Mac showed up at the appointed time and place, played it cool and delivered a slew of strong hooks — to Richardson’s delight.
“It turned out when we were talking to Seddy, he was like, ‘Yeah, that was only my third session I’ve ever did in my life,” she marvels.
For Richardson and White, that’s confirmation that they should tap more Nashville hip-hop talent for future camps. Publishing income, they realize, can be a game changer for musicians who’ve been shut out of their hometown’s traditional music industry.
The success of the camp is also a step toward making Nashville a destination for a sector of the global industry that Strong says had little reason to consider it in the past. But he’s still a little coy about what else Drumatized is planning.
“Recently, I’ve been in Brazil. I’ve been in Mexico City. I’ve been in London,” he recounts. “I can’t say too much about show business matters, but you know, we have a few artists from different places, even outside of America that we are developing and wanting to bring to Nashville.”
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