Country music celebrity bars have come to dominate Lower Broadway in the past decade. Blake Shelton, Eric Church, Miranda Lambert, Dierks Bentley, Luke Combs and Jason Aldean all have places down there — and that’s an abbreviated list.
Last week, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre announced that they’re opening their own downtown Nashville spot.
The branding of country stars’ establishments tends to follow a certain formula, nodding to their big hits everywhere from the name on the marquee to the items on the menu. That’s case with the Still G.I.N. Lounge by Dre and Snoop; it shares its name with the duo’s brand of gin, which in turn, calls back to a mid-‘90s classic that helped put Dre’s production and Snoop’s unhurried flow on the national map.
In lots of major tourist destinations in the U.S., from Vegas to Miami and New York to Los Angeles, the celebrity names attached to restaurants and clubs are a selling point. What’s a little surprising is that the two icons of West Coast hip-hop are opening their bar’s first location in Nashville, where it will stand apart in the country-centric tourist district.
In last year’s Making Noise podcast, producer and DJ A.B. Eastwood, who’s had residencies and a Cowboy Carter listening party at Lower Broadway’s Acme Feed & Seed, expressed his desire to see a downtown spot devoted to rap and R&B.
“I can’t wait for the for whenever it is a time that a Black act can demand that type of respect from the city,” he said.
Eastwood was envisioning a space for Nashville’s homegrown hip-hop scene.
So far, though, Snoop has mostly forged connections with rap-adjacent country stars, including HARDY and ERNEST.
What the lounge means locally will become clearer after Still G.I.N. opens on April 4.