News / / 18.12.13

Tree talks us through the soul trap

We catch up with the artist behind our favourite rap mixtape of 2013.

After revisiting all the best Datpiff and Livemixtapes downloads we’ve accumulated over the last 12 months, we decided to rank Tree’s Sunday School II: When Church Lets Out no.1 in our rap mixtapes of the year list.  And after hearing the news, the Chicago based ‘soul trap’ creator was more than happy for us to fire a few questions at him.

 

You’ve been putting stuff out for some time now, but it seems like the Sunday School II tape was a something of a breakthrough. Do you feel like you’ve had a big year?

I do. I feel like every year since the first Sunday School has been a great year. I feel like next year will be another momentous year for me. But with playing the Pitchfork Festival and signing with Creative Control, 2013 has been the biggest.

When did you first fall in love with soul music, is that something you’ve inherited from your parents? 

I fell in love with music in church. I grew up in church, my grandma was the lady that they called ‘the Mother of the church’. She’d sing all the time, she’d make us join in whether we wanted to or not. But soul came later when I began to listen to music. My parents liked good ol’ old school jams. Stepping music is what we call it in Chicago. I would hear it in my pop’s car takin’ rides with him to the veterans administration hospital or school.

We’d like to ask you about your perspective of Chicago. What’s the vibe of your neighbourhood and what’s your day-to-day lifestyle like?

Well I just recently moved to the west side of Chicago which is a lot calmer and mature than the southside, so my neighborhood and its inhabitants are pretty laid back. I see kids riding their bikes in the summer at night, that never happens in Englewood. But my day consists of waking up, thanking God for another day, I wash my ass, turn on my computer, roll up and do music. Make beats, search for samples via Youtube. I try to pick my boys up from school when I’m in town. Whenever possible I sit them for a while then I drop them off, do a little more music, roll up again and then probably hit a hole in the wall bar in Chicago.

Can you tell us more about the characters you shout out at the end of Most Successful?

J Rocks is a brother I grew up with in Cabrini Green as well as my homie Zilla. We all came from gang violence and food stamps but J Rocks is attending Georgetown Medical School and Zilla is living in Iowa now running his own organic brand company. Both are doing well. So the message I was trying to send was that you should measure your success on your own scale. Is being an up-and-coming rapper with an ever growing buzz bigger or better than being the only black male studying medicine at Georgetown? NO. But my success is mine, this is what I consider success. I set a goal and I accomplished it. What’s yours?

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