The more poetic half of Dead Trash Mob Records' alternative hip hop duo The Greys and scholarly older brother to his precarious younger sibling Bagel Jesus, Trè Marsh, also known by the monikers Trè Ocho and Trè Guevara, is an emcee of a different feather. The 28-year-old Lenny Kravitz look-alike (when his hair is in au naturale mode, of course) is implementing a different strategy to stay ahead in the game: read up on the greats. I'm not only talking Biggie Smalls, Rakim, and Public Enemy, but literary greats like David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, and James Joyce. "A lot of the music that I do make is literary, and that’s only because as an emcee, you have to step away from what everybody's doing. If I have to separate myself individually from any other artist it's going to be the fact that I read a lot," he said while hanging out downtown with me at the Nickel City Records studio.
The former New York University attendee is a slamming sensei of sorts. His love for spoken word and zest for knowledge both musical and literary provides context, balance, and satirical stylings to an odd genre that The Greys have creatively carved into, trash hop, alternative rap. The musician thanks a mix of musical influences for contributing to his creative salivation. "It was wrong for me to listen to a lot of music growing up because my mom was very religious at one point and she heard a line from Michael Jackson saying, 'Even sell my soul to the devil' in regards to talking about a girl and she was like 'Hell nah!' It was really bad for me to listen to certain things and that made me want to listen to it even more...Like at one point, I was like nine or ten years old and I was big into The Smashing Pumpkins, which pretty much got me into rock."
On his latest solo album, Trècubessence (due for release in April but can be heard in pieces on Soundcloud), the savvy master of wordplay fiddles with the English language while we float into the stratosphere of his mind. He dreams up his perfect mate, a woman as dark, seductive, and dangerous as Morticia Addams in the gothic fairytale, "Filthy, Fishy Dreams of Persephone." He states his belief in not compromising himself for anyone else's tastes in "Arthur Miller," another personal favorite of mine. "Nothing that I do is really personal, but the feelings that I do have about things are relative. Everyone feels that when you're talking about people trying to crucify you, who literally in the game, doesn’t feel like they’re being crucified for how they feel or what they say," he says of the song. Each track so far being released on Trècubessence is a piece of lyrical madness. The emcee is the Phantom of the Opera behind his words, inventing the plot as he goes, taking the story through climactic twists and sinister turns until insanely lost in the drama.
Whether his head's in the clouds, in a book, behind a camera (He's also an assistant manager at The Nickel City Blend project), or listening to Madonna behind his mother's back (Yes, he's down with Madonna), Trè Marsh is continuously learning, always astute, and forever the rebel.
~ Photo by J.K. Media
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