Trippin' with Trip Rexx

Moving around a lot as a child can obviously have a big impact on a person, like having to move to a whole new city in the middle of your school years… Now imagine if that happened not once but four times across countries and states, and you start to unravel the origin story of musician and rapper on the rise, Trip Rexx.

Born in Toronto, Trip’s childhood took him from Eastern Canada to the Western United States, initially relocating to the Bay area, before a few cross country moves to Connecticut and then Phoenix. Understandably finding it hard to fit right in and feeling like a bit of a misfit, Trip’s love of music began to burn stronger than ever - initially escaping into music, before channelling his passion into songwriting.

As he honed his skills as a songwriter, musician and rapper, Rexx also began to experiment with psychedelic drugs, sparking a philosophical and spiritual awakening - an awakening that led him to speak openly and honestly about topics including mental health, existentialism, self-liberation, and interpersonal relationships through his lyrics.

Fusing a wide range of sounds and genres, Trip’s music goes far beyond hip hop, fusing pop punk melodies with bouncy, trappy beats, all wrapped up in a psychedelic and, well, trippy twist.

With his last album Blue Planet out last year, we caught up with the now LA-based creative to find out all about his journey so far and where he’s going!

So I guess to start at the beginning, I read you were born in Toronto but moved around a whole lot as a youngster to the Bay Area, Connecticut, Phoenix… What was that like and did that have much of an impact on you?

It had a big impact. A lot of the time growing up, I had to make new friends and kind of would find myself in situations where I felt like an outsider just from moving around so much. I think that had a big impact on me. I feel like that's kind of a part of my persona as an artist being… I don’t want to say I'm like a loner because I have strong relationships with my small circle, but I'm pretty selective about the people that I let into that circle. I feel like it helped me kind of get to know myself a lot because I spent a lot of time with myself andalso I feel like it influenced me into becoming kind of a well rounded person, because I've spent time in different places around different kinds of people. I feel like there's advantages and disadvantages to it. It's hard for me to kind of pin down where home is to me, but I think that can be a good thing too, because I'm comfortable moving around. I'm comfortable kind of being in a nomad, which is kind of the life of an artist.

What about music when you were moving around - when did you first discover music, was it a bit of an escape, a solace?

Definitely. Music wasn’t really something that was part of my family life - my parents like music and would play music, for sure…

What sort of stuff were the folks playing?

My dad, he grew up in the 80s so he’s a big 80s music guy, he like a lot of hair metal and stuff like that. He put me onto some greats, like David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Prince, Rick James - that kind of stuff, that’s kind of what I grew up with. My mum kind of just played the radio a lot growing up, honestly, so I would be exposed to hit records and stuff like that through her. The only band I would really credit her with really introducing me to specifically was The Beatles. When I was a kid, my mom gave me a “Looney Tunes sing The Beatles” record when I was really little and I remember listening to it a lot and really liking the songs, and then going and listening to the actual Beatles versions. I’m a huge Beatles fan, so that’s the biggest influence my mum had on me musically.

I started playing music when I was in second grade, so I was already living in Connecticut by that point, and then I played a couple of different instruments. I started with piano, I didn’t really stick with piano that hard - my piano skills are very basic, but that kind of introduced me into reading music and just playing with music in general. I ended up picking up bass and guitar, which is probably where I have the most experience as far as an instrument. My brother was a drummer growing up, so I have a little bit of drum knowledge just through him. I would say as far as discovering new music, that happened a lot through my friends and stuff like that when I was in elementary and middle school.

Once I started to discover music kind of outside of what my parents were showing me, like you said, it was a big kind of retreat for me. I would spend a lot of time listening to records, spend a lot of time looking for new artists, and spend time trying to write songs from a pretty early age. I think the first time I ever tried to write lyrics or something was probably around ten or eleven that didn't evolve into anything that was like a real song, probably until I was maybe a little older. I started rapping when I was 13 or 14, and that was when I really started recording music too. I had a friend who I was actually playing in a band with at the time and he had a little studio basement where we would record our records, and me and a couple of other guys in the band kind of started playing around with making beats and rapping and stuff like that.

Yeah right, cos I’m curious - you said you started rapping, but when did you discover hip hop as a medium? Cos you mentioned lots of instruments and bands and stuff, but what was the first hip hop that really influenced you to start spitting bars?

One of my really close friends growing up, he was kind of like a big influence on me musically and in general. Super talented musician, super wide palate, he would put me onto all kinds of music. I don't remember exactly how old I was, it probably was in middle school. I’d already listened to hip hop from whatever was popular at the time, but I remember him bringing in a big stack of CDs, back when you were still burning CDs. He gave me a bunch of classic albums like The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, I think Ready To Die was in there, Enter The 36 Chambers, just a bunch of classics. Then newer stuff at the time, probably Graduation and The Carter III.

I remember I put them all on my computer and was just kind of listening to them all - that was when I really discovered hip hop in depth. Specifically, I remember really loving Graduation . And The Cool. Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool. After that I was discovering more like “rebellious” music, for me being a suburban kid at that time, it felt rebellious. Now I’ve kind of put that together with the alt rock and stuff I was already listening to and I grew into the sound that I ultimately make now.

I love that we’re having this conversation while you’re wearing a Gorillaz shirt too, which kind of captures that vibe.

I’m glad you noticed that - I love Gorillaz. You know what? Gorillaz were probably also an early example of me listening to hip hop because they blend a lot of hip hop in their stuff. So I was pretty young when I started listening to Gorillaz, maybe even in elementary school.

And it’s dope with Gorillaz, cos exactly - a lot of people heard them on the radio or whatever and through “oh, that’s Gorillaz”, without realising they were hearing like Del or Doom or De La or whoever.

I was a big Doom fan, more in high school. But yeah, I love MF Doom, RIP for real.

Same dude, same… So after listening to all of those classic records, you know I can’t help but think it was like “The Reeducation of Trip Rexx” or something, but when did the Trip Rexx alias emerge? And I guess if you want to touch on psychedelics and they’re impact on you, as a big proponent myself, that’d be cool.

Totally. It’s funny - the name came about before I ever did any psychedelics. I specifically remember coming up with the Rexx part first. I knew in my head I wanted a two part stage name. I wanted it to feel like a real name, like a first and last name and I had an obsession with dinosaurs as a kid. I always liked dinosaurs, I like the Toronto Raptors so I kind of was like, “oh Rexx would be a cool last name for my stage name”. I remember I was kind of playing with different options for the first name, seeing what sounded good and stuff and my dad randomly was like, “well. what if you were Trip Rexx, like Tirex?” He kind of just started calling me that and I liked it, so I stuck with that. I think I was probably 15 or 16, so I’d already been rapping for like a year or two when that name came about. I started smoking weed probably younger than I should have, that was my introduction into drugs, I guess. I did mushrooms for the first time right after I graduated high school and I definitely remember that being impactful. I think when I really started to experiment more with psychedelics was in college doing like LSD and stuff like that and mushrooms too. It was a very impactful thing for me because before that I was raised Catholic and I actually went to Catholic school up until I was in middle school or almost in high school.

I kind of fell away from religion because I just started questioning things so much as a young kid and a lot of it didn't make sense to me so I kind of became an atheist for a while, but once I did psychedelics I just felt something that I hadn't felt before and kind of started to get reinterested in religion and spirituality, not just Christianity, but I started looking into other religions as well, Buddhism and Hinduism and a lot of Eastern religions and philosophies and stuff like that. It kind of reopened my eyes to all the themes in religion and kind of helped me to regain faith in a higher power, but in a whole new way where I kind of had my own more personal understanding and relationship with it. So, yeah, psychedelics were really formative for me, so it just kind of was like a happy accident that I had already picked the name Trip.

That’s funny, cos it’s almost like manifest destiny and in a roundabout way, your dad was telling you to trip… *laughs*

*laughs* He definitely didn't want me to. Now his opinions have changed because I've kind of talked to him about it as an adult, but yeah, it's funny that he suggested Trip.

For sure, attitudes are slowly but surely changing with psychedelics as more research comes out and more places are decriminalising or legalising medical usage and stuff. So what about how your psychedelic and spiritual experiences translate into your lyrics? Cos you cover themes of existentialism and stuff, which definitely overlaps with what we’re talking about.

Yeah. I think it pushed me to examine deep themes like you're talking about, especially existential themes. When I was going to college - I dropped out of college to continue pursuing music, but I was majoring in philosophy, so it was all kind of like combining. I was really interested in that kind of stuff. I was doing psychedelics and I was spending a lot of time just songwriting in my room and just kind of thinking deeply, so that stuff all definitely made its way into a lot of my music. My songwriting process is very stream of consciousness. I don't actually write anything down. I did when I first started through high school and stuff, but once I was in college, I was kind of already just getting on the mic and I'll just kind of punch in as I go as I think of things. So I put a big emphasis on just allowing my consciousness to kind of just express itself on the record, and I think that goes well with those kinds of themes and stuff like that.

I wanted to know about your songwriting process… straight from the dome, Jay-Z styles.

Jay-Z and Lil Wayne are kind of where I learned that from. I find that it helps me a lot because when I used to write full songs and go record them, there would be times where maybe I had written a piece that wasn't translating as well onto the record as I expected it to in my head snd that can be frustrating when you're going to try to record something. So I find that when I'm kind of just writing as I record, I can kind of live test things, see how they feel. If it sounds good, then I just keep going. If not, then I re-examine and see if I want to try something different.

Yeah sick, I love that. So speaking of recording, your last album was Blue Planet in June last year and I’m curious - what’s your take on the album as a format, or even like a full length mixtape in hip hop, in this current ADD 10 second tiktok generation?

I definitely understand the way that people are releasing music now in response to that. I understand playing the singles game, but I grew up with albums. I love albums. I feel like most artists would probably agree with me and say they consume music via albums. I'm the kind of guy - it’s kind of funny, this pisses my girlfriend off because she just likes to listen to her favourite songs, but I'm the kind of guy where I'll put on an album front to back. Maybe some people get tired of hearing the same artist over and over again but I like to hear the full body of work. So it's hard for me to not make albums because something just kind of drives me to do it.

Usually the way that I kind of create, if I am creating an album is I will just make a lot of songs, but there'll be a kind of a direction that I'm going or sort of a sound that I'm sticking with. I’ll have a span of a few months where I’m just making songs, then I kind of go and pick my favourite ones as I go and compile them into a playlist and try to curate how that would sound as an album. Right now, going forward, I'm probably going to start doing waterfall releases where I still am crafting a project at the end of the day, but I think that people mostly consume singles now and I think at least when you're at the stage that I'm at, you do have to kind of consistently put out a lot of songs because that's how you're going to keep people's attention.

I think that's how each song is going to get its due because I think that if you're a smaller artist nowadays and you drop a project, there's automatically going to be songs that just don't get as much attention. I mean, even with Blue Planet, there were songs on there that did not get as much attention as the singles and I kind of expected it, but, yeah, that's just the nature of the game now.

For sure, and it sounds like it’s still a happy medium, like drip feed singles but they’re still part of a bigger picture, even if that’s not necessarily a traditional album… So speaking of, what about at the moment, anything in the pipeline?

Yeah, I have so much music to release right now, I almost don't know what to do with it. I’m going to start dropping singles again this summer, I’m gearing up for that. The stuff that I've been working on now is definitely a little different. It's got a bit more of that kind of alt rock influence to it, a little more crossover. Still a lot of hip hop influence. I'm never going to stray away from that just because hip hop is really how I first started expressing myself as a songwriter and it's where I'm most comfortable. But, yeah, I'm trying to play with new stuff and I think I want to kind of take a Kanye-esque approach and make each of my projects kind of feel different and have their own kind of sound and vibe to them. So this summer, I'll start rolling out some singles and definitely expect some pop, punk, some alt rock influence in it on top of the rap.

Sick, keen to hear it. So finally, one last thing I’d be remiss not to ask about is your live shows - you’ve been performing since a young age and are pretty prolific on the stage, so how important is playing live to your whole creative process?

It's definitely important to me. I mean, it's become more important recently. You're right, I've been performing since I was a kid, but I think that I didn't really lock in my live show experience until more recently. Once COVID hit, I stopped performing for a while and then when it came time for me to start performing again, I kind of sat down - I really wanted to curate my live show, figure out what's going to set me apart. I invested in a vocal processor so I could do auto tune and effects on my voice live because I think that makes a big difference. I started making sure that I was taking my lead vocal off of all my tracks because for a while I was kind of being lazy and just performing over my tracks - not to call out any artists and say they're lazy, but that's very popular right now.

I decided I wanted to really put the time in to make myself kind of stand out when I perform live. So that's something that I've been putting a lot of focus into lately. Before that, I guess it was less of my focus - I'm a studio rat. I really love to songwrite. I really love to be in the studio. I love to perform, too, but I'd say that's my secondary love. But now that I've been performing the way that I have been lately and I've been doing more shows and starting to get really comfortable with it, it's been a lot of fun. I'm enjoying it.

Yeah awesome, glad to hear. Nice one Trip, that was wicked, thanks for chatting man - really enjoyed that!

Thanks man, yeah me too.

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