TRXBE
Family Trxbe
Minneapolis, MN, United States
Hip-hop and rap go together like family. You rarely find one without the other and some would argue they blend into one genre in many cases. But for me, hip-hop and rap still occupy different worlds, and when they come together, it can be magical. A great display of this familial majesty can be found on TRXBE’s debut EP, ‘FAMILY TRXBE.’ The sound in the spotlight is classic hip-hop, utilising big band sounds, soul influence and samples and bringing the whole instrumental together the way it should be done and has been done for years. The resulting sound and subsequent feeling is authentic, bold, warm and full of bite. It's hip-hop at its deepest, and when you layer on top of that the contemporary rap that TRXBE and others bring to the EP, it's exemplary. Rap, for me, loses its charm if it is not clever, if it loses its wit, I think that’s what sets it apart from fast pop. I can say with full confidence that the wit is here, it's bright it’s intelligent and it is quick, ever so quick.
The songs roll from one to another, giving you a different flavour of hip-hop history as you go, but each song revolves around family and those connections that you can have with one another, one that is deeper than love, a feeling of belonging. ‘WEALTH’ kicks us off, fitting for a rap album. What will hit you straight away is that tone, those brass textures, the sub-bass that warbles in the pit and the percussion that skitters above it all. It's destined to be fantastic from the get-go, and when the vocals drop in, it's assured. They are warm, tonal, carry a melody (which can be lost in some indie rap) and hold an attitude, which is important for that hip-hop pairing. Once we move into ‘LiL Bihh’ the sound is with you, now you feel the rhythms build about you and the songs sing anew.
Each track brings its own flair. The EP starts bright and tones it down, it mellows as it plays and at the end it's teetering on shoe gaze in its pace and design. But that hip-hop blood doesn’t slip away. It is in the spotlight the entire time and it's intoxicating. The rhythm on ‘Free,’ the bold rising and falling strings on ‘Takeoff’ and the cyclic modern instrumental on ‘Love’. It's rap, but it's more than that, its a music built from a foundation of love, passion and connection to the sounds that they are playing in, a connection as thick as blood, a connection to family.
The sounds here are rich and decadent, they leave you wanting more and I sincerely hope more is to come from TRXBE, though there was a lot of talent on this EP: SPVCE*, KxMilz and 6ix12 all lent their sounds and souls to ‘FAMILY TRXBE’ and it shows. A solid sound that is as layered as this, can only come from bringing music into family.