How much of an influence has growing up in Compton been? Your sound is West Coast-inspired, but it’s also not. I did a bunch of practice shows, but I haven’t looked at any of the notes yet. I need to go over the footage I like to go through it all whenever I do something. I still haven’t processed it all, but I’m very happy and proud because we rehearsed a lot. The venue was capacity at 200, and we had like 500 people trying to get in. It feels a bit like New York in terms of everyone mixed together. We caught up with him the morning after to talk dancefloor spirituality, FaceTiming Elton John and Compton’s legacy. Citing the fact that Jimi Hendrix played his first show in London, Tres took to the Shacklewell Arms on Halloween for a show featuring backing dancers and plenty of vibes. Having signed to Godmode, the indie-house label currently enjoying global success with New York DJ/producer Yaeji, and dropped his debut self-titled EP earlier this year, Channel Tres came to London at the end of October for his first live show ever. Tres isn’t quite ready to claim California as his own just yet. Tres sees himself as the latest champion in a long of men who specialise in ‘talking shit over hard ass beats.’ Inspired by Bobby Womack, Isaac Hayes and Iggy Pop, Tres’ rap style is slow and calculated, revelling in his voice’s natural power. Chief among these elements is Tres’ voice, a baritone rumble so low that it often competes for frequency with his basslines. Whether it’s the wailing, screw-your-face-up synths that come gliding in mid-way through ‘Topdown’ or his penchant for chunky 808s, the elements of California have remained in Channel Tres’ music are what sets it apart from much of the current house music scene. There’s a certain irony in Channel Tres’ story – it’s his roots, rather than his time in Oklahoma, that have come to define his music. Eventually, through flirtations with folk, and inspired by his dad’s roots in Chicago, he found house music. In Tulsa, which counts the Hanson brothers, OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder and St Vincent’s Annie Clark as hometown musical heroes, Tres dedicated himself to music, isolating himself from much of the world around him and experimenting with new sounds and the occasional new substance in search of something new, something different to what he had known in California. On paper, it was the furthest thing from Compton and Los Angeles he could find, mid-western, cold and empty compared to the almost infinite sprawl of LA County. Inspired by a Kendrick Lamar interview he heard on the radio, Channel Tres abandoned his hometown for four years to study in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He’s gone to great lengths to do it as well. Though littered with nods to Compton’s heritage – “Shit got brazy with the more we had,” he growls on ‘Glide’, a nod to YG’s 2016 opus ‘Still Brazy’ and Compton’s longstanding association with the bloods – Tres has dedicated himself to moving beyond what people expect of a young black artist in Compton. Specialising in an understated, low-end heavy take on house music, given a subtle West Coat makeover, Channel Tres is part of a new vanguard of Compton musicians, alongside the likes of August 08 and The Internet’s Steve Lacy, opening up the types of music we’ve come to expect from the Californian city. The city’s newest star, Channel Tres, couldn’t be much further from either. Say the words ‘Compton MC’ and an image and sound instantly come to mind. From NWA to TDE and through to YG, Compton and its surrounding metropolitan areas, Long Beach, Inglewood, Lynwood, have defined the genre since its inception. With the exception of Berlin and techno, few cities are as closely associated with a genre as Compton is with gangster rap. Compton is one of the most storied cities in pop music.
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