The Songwriting Success Of Singing Rapper Tim Gent And Rapping Singer Bryant Taylorr

How Tim Gent and Bryant Taylorr, a rapper and singer respectively, began cultivating their talents and strategizing how to open the door to the insular world of professional songwriting.

For so many who chase Nashville music careers, an obvious first step, or last resort, is to focus on commercial songwriting and to try and land a publishing deal. But it was hardly a given that former roommates and frequent co-writers Gent, a charismatically ruminative, singing rapper, and Bryant Taylorr, an alt-R&B singer with a distinctive, gauzy timbre, would have the option of securing such arrangements for themselves.

Taylorr grew up in Antioch, a racially and ethnically diverse suburb on the southeast edge of Nashville. His mom once held a DJ gig at 92Q, an urban adult contemporary station, and later worked as a publicist for gospel performers, while his dad stockpiled studio gear with a never-quite-realized goal of operating a small studio. But their endeavors were largely independent from the that seemed bound for somewhere. He recalls, "It was like, 'That's my ticket out.' "