Interview: Tim Gent

By Sammy Lowdermilk

By Sammy Lowdermilk

As 2019 begins, we can expect more music, more live performances and more visual content from Tim Gent. He’s a rising star coming out of the Nashville area and has been in numerous publications as an artist to watch. I reached out to Tim Gent to get some insight into his motivation and creative process, but also, selfishly to see who he was listening to out of Chattanooga.

So who is Tim Gent? “Tim Gent is my real name shortened. People called my pops Gent in the military when he served so I kind of just adopted the name and ran with it whenever I started making tunes,” he says. He’s always been involved with music because of church, but started making music when his peers in Clarksville started dropping music and projects. “My bro Roger said he thinks we should rap and we started it up.” Tim Gent remembers Kendrick Lamar dropped “Section .80” then upon hearing J. Cole’s “Friday Night Lights,” made and released his first body of work that year.

Tim Gent pulls his inspiration from a lot of places; he mentions the span of gospel to Musiq Soulchild, to Jay Z and Kendrick. He says his creative process is just as varied as his inspiration. “It’s sporatic. I don’t have any rituals of formulas. The tunes come at me at a few different angles. Sometimes I don’t write. Sometimes it takes me forever to write something. Other times, I’ll write something extremely fast. It just depends on the day honestly.”

There’s been a recent connection forming among Tennessee artists so I asked Tim Gent who he’s been listening to out of Chattanooga, “I rock w The House tough. I rock w Swayyvo too.” Clearly Chattanooga has been getting attention throughout Tennessee, but I also see and hear Chattanooga rocking other artists all across the state.

Tim Gent has a positive outlook about the music scene in the Nashville area, “It’s definitely flourishing. Like never before in my opinion. It’s about to explode.” Just like the Chattanooga scene, things are popping all across Tennessee.