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Tricky Embraces His Western Heritage

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By CURTIS ROSS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 5, 2009

British performer Tricky's new album pays tribute to an area most people try to avoid.

The rapper-musician who first came to prominence with Massive Attack before releasing his acclaimed 1995 solo debut, "Maxinquaye," titled his 2007 album "Knowle West Boy." It's a reference to the infamous part of Bristol where Tricky, born Adrian Thaws, was raised.

It's a heritage he was encouraged to deny.

"The teachers told us not to put Knowle West on job applications or we wouldn't get hired," Tricky says by telephone from a tour stop in Scotland. "No one wanted us in clubs, schools, jobs."

Tricky says he was denied admission to clubs because he was from Knowle West. Conversely, friends from outside the neighborhood wouldn't come to Knowle West to drink. "Massive Attack wouldn't go there," Tricky says. "Even people from other ghettos won't go there."

Tricky, who is biracial, says he never experienced racism in predominantly white Knowle West.

"By the time I was born my family had been there for generations," Tricky says. "My grandmother was there and my great-grandmother was there. After so many generations, you just become a name. It's nothing to do with color."

The National Front, roughly the British equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan, found that out the hard way. Poor whites are the primary target for racist recruiters but the Front got a not-so-warm welcome in Knowle West.

"The National Front tried to march through there and there was a massive fight," Tricky says. "Anytime a group marches through as a gang there will be a fight."

The violence wasn't a political statement. Knowle West residents "just love to fight," Tricky says. "They don't care what they're fighting for."

Tricky speaks affectionately of the old neighborhood, but it's easy to hear the fear an outsider might feel in his music.

"Maxinquaye" took the trip-hop sound Tricky helped develop with Massive Attack to new and disturbing places. There was a palpable tension even in the album's calmest parts. Beats threatened to dislodge themselves. Noises bounced around speakers like an early Public Enemy production in super slow-mo. At low volume, it was atmospheric. Turned up, it was as compelling as a nightmare.

Eight albums into his career, Tricky continues to create original urban soundtracks, although light and humor are also part of his repertoire now - check the twisted blues of "Knowle West" opener "Puppy Toy."

Fittingly for music that so often seems to emerge from the shadows, Tricky himself often is not center stage, preferring to employ others, particularly women, as vocalists.

"I want all kinds of different people to hear what I've got to say," Tricky says. "I don't think I can do that with just my voice. Women can get to places I wouldn't be able to get to."

CONCERT PREVIEW

Tricky

WITH: DJ Lazy and B.C.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: State Theatre, 687 Central Ave., St. Petersburg; (727) 895-3045

HOW MUCH: $22

Reporter Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568.

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