Chris DeLine

Nashville might still be best known as Music City, but for the past three years Wick-It the Instigator and his crew of like-minded underground artists have done their best to rechristen the city as Mashville. Starting out as a group of six DJs in August of 2007, subsequent comings and goings within the collective have left DJ Kidsmeal, DJ Orig & DJ Wick-It as the sole original members, now rounded out as a solid five-man team by Andrew Batemen and Mike Vulcan. Since first combining their efforts the DJs have built a solid following within the city largely due to their regularly hosted Mashville shows, a series which has since become “The longest running independent DJ showcase in and around Nashville.” “The whole idea behind the event was to make a monthly event rooted in hip hop, but also open to anything else the DJs wanted to play,” explained Wick-It in a recent email interview. “We attribute most of the event’s lasting power to the wide variety of genres it includes.” The live shows are just a single aspect of what the group does however; the heart of Mashville is still the music.

In October Wick-It dropped a special release commemorating the crew’s three year anniversary which mashed the likes of Nas with Men Without Hats and remixed Antoine Dodson’s viral “Bed Intruder” hit. There was one track on the mix that stood above the rest however, a mashup blending “Tighten Up” from the Black Keys with Big Boi’s “Shutterbug.” Within a month’s time word had spread about the set, reaching as high up Big Boi himself, who gave the track a shout out on his blog. “I never intended to make an entire mashup album of those two artists originally,” continued Wick-It. “But after Big Boi gave ‘Black Bug’ the triple blast on his website, Facebook, and Twitter… and his manager contacted me to give props, The Brothers of Chico Dusty was obviously the next step.”

The process of producing the seven additional tracks to round out the album took the producer about three weeks, “The goal was to get it out before Christmas, which was successful as it was released on December 21.” Now eight days after the album’s initial release, the eight tracks have already seen a slew of media blasts (ranging from Nah Right to the Smoking Section to Spin, where it currently remains the site’s most popular news item) and have racked up a staggering 280,000 combined plays on the album’s Soundcloud page.

Could this recent success be a sign of things to come for Wick-It and the crew in 2011? Who knows, really. But at least for the time being, the breakout mix has pushed a few more music fans to think of Mashville when thinking of Music City.

The entire eight track album is available as a free download (either as 320 kbps, FLAC or LOSSLESS files) at Wick-It’s Bandcamp page.

[This post was first published by Culture Bully.]