Pop & Hiss

The L.A. Times music blog

Category: Trek Life

Star Trek: A talk with rising underground rapper Trek Life

September 1, 2010 |  6:00 am
Trek_Life-07 Trek Life is so L.A. He bleeds purple and gold, bumps Battlecat and name-drops the oft-forgotten Funkdoobiest in interviews. That’s as L.A. as you can get for someone whose formative years were split between the city itself and West Covina. Yet Trek waves the flags of both the Inland Empire and the 310/323/818 axis.

He’s of the generation that came up on both Death Row and Project Blowed. His first experience rapping came in the mid-'90s, over will.i.am’s earliest beats, back when he went by the name Will-1X. He learned how to make records firsthand by watching Atban Klann (Black Eyed Peas 1.0) and Blood of Abraham, two of Ruthless Records’ less menacing outfits. He came up attending the famous Unity nights and even attempted to battle Myka 9 as a callow teenager.

Flash forward a decade and a half and Trek’s sophomore release, “Everything Changed Nothing,” is one of this year’s finest local rap records, a thoughtful, well-crafted effort from an MC versed in regional history and his place in it. It helps when you have a slate of beats from Washington, D.C.’s Oddisee, who has rightfully asserted his place at the helm of producers working underneath whatever passes for the mainstream.

The genesis for the record came when the East Coast producer came west and sifted through Trek’s old record collection: Freestyle Fellowship, Pharcyde and old Ice Cube records, from G-funk to the subterranean thump of the L.A. underground. The result never feels like sonic tourism. Oddisee’s sojourn allowed him to soak up the vibes from the scorching sunshine, swaying palm trees and freeway funk. Meanwhile, Trek artfully uses the canvasses to spin tales of his daughter, cookouts to celebrate law school graduations, and black migration to the West Coast.

Continue reading »


Advertisement





Categories


Archives
 



Get the Entertainment Newsletter
From screen to stage, music to art.
See a sample | Sign up