The Aug. 31, 2023 cover of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. Credit: Photo by Jack Cymbryla. Design by Jack Spatafora.

At his childhood home in Delaware, Hansel Wilson’ mother surrounded him with hip-hop and R&B. “She’s a huge Salt-N-Pepa fan, and a huge Rakim fan,” Wilson, aka Aych, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.

Heavy D and Run-D.M.C. were also in the mix, but The God MC is the reason Aych (pronounced like the letter “H”) started rapping in the first place. Whenever he got a chance, Aych would put on a Rakim cassette and listen, pick up the intricacies of the delivery, then bring what he learned to mini cyphers at school where classmates would approve of what they heard.

“But I was really just taking his flow and putting my own words on it,” he said. “I was literally a hip-hop kid.”
To close out Labor Day weekend, Aych kicks off his homegrown, far-reaching music festival, Loud On 7th, which will surround Ybor City with not just hip-hop and R&B, but also rock and poetry.

Loud On 7th takes place at seven venues on four different Seventh Avenue blocks in the historic district. The eighth stage is at one of the neighborhood’s brightest new spots, Nana’s Restaurant & Juice Bar on E 4th Avenue, which hosts the opening day “Hip-Hop & Shop” featuring vendors, plus more than a dozen artists including kid rapper Kanary Yellow and the Bay area drum academy. Day one wraps with a grown folks party at one of Aych’s regular haunts, Crowbar, where Tampa’s popular Beat Down Band headlines.

The next six days are a mix of comedy, poetry, live music, hip-hop trivia, media panels, battles, showcases, art shows, producer summits, networking events, industry chats, apparel parties, Verzuz-style concerts, national headliners like Ann Marie and more.

In all, Loud On 7th—happening Monday-Sunday, Sept. 4-10 at various venues in Ybor City Florida—features almost two dozen events, including a few that feature no cover (tickets for other events start at $5 and go all the way up to $225 for a full festival wristband).

While the festival is somewhat new, Aych has long been a presence in the historic district, where he’s worked since moving to the area in 2004. Crowbar is now home to his monthly Cypher series, but he used to perform during a different open mic at the club when it was still called On the Rocks. When it shut down, Aych, who was part of Tampa’s Umbrella Corporation collective, brought the party to places like Empire and Full Moon Saloon. The owner at the latter encouraged Aych to become a promoter.

“I was against it,” Aych told CL He just wanted to rap and write because he thought some promoters were in it for the wrong reasons. Eventually, though, his desire to rap started to fade. “I kind of fell out of love with it a little bit.”

So after patronizing festival-conferences like Atlanta’s nearly 20-year-old AC3, Aych noticed fellow Tampeños well-represented among attendees and wondered why there wasn’t something like it back home.

“We had the infrastructure. We had the layout, and with me working with all these different clubs, the Ybor, it was just connecting the dots,” he said. In its four years, Loud On 7th has hosted legends like Kid Capri, plus wave-making newcomers like Snow Tha Product, Ball Greezy, Tae Bae, and homegrown favorites like Dynasty, Famous Kid Brick and local rap hero Tom G.

This year, he’s booked more non-hip-hop acts than ever before. He’s even started rapping again, inspired by a new energy and attitude that young Loud On 7th acts have brought to the festival. The support from the rap community is there for Loud On 7th and he hopes to grow it, but his job, Aych said, is to bring more casual fans to all these stages to hear something different.

“My homework for the festival every year is figuring out how to grab more and more of that audience that just loves music, whether it’s hip-hop, R&B, whatever,” he said. “I don’t want it to be just a hip-hop festival, I want it to expand. I want it to be the festival that people come to when they want to see the up and coming acts, no matter what genre it is.”

More than anything, Aych wants locals to take advantage of the programming he works so hard to build out. “This festival is made in Tampa, but it’s for the world,” he said.

He can’t say that loud enough.

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