But it's maybe more accurate to say that they're searching for multiple doors: Despite the tumult of 2020, which kicked off in Nashville with an early March tornado gutting historically Black North Nashville neighborhoods and bohemian East Nashville enclaves, this has been a banner year for the city's hip-hop. That's partly because of the quality of the indie projects released in 2020, including the mischievously expansive sci-fi imagination of Namir Blade's concept album Aphelion's Traveling Circus; the poetic quickness and wily, woozy flow that Brian Brown displays on Journey; the nimbleness of Chuck Indigo's pivot from the introspection of Indigo Café to the enlightened ferment of No Moor Bad Days; the sure-footedness of EP's by Daisha McBride, Tim Gent, Yours Truly Jai, Jordan Xx and Ron Obasi, who also just dropped a mixtape. This is also the artistic community responsible for this year's most astute and authoritative reportage on threats to Black lives, in Nashville and beyond. And on the business front, the scene is making strides toward economic self-empowerment.