Tricky - Best Of The Bunch
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Tricky Kid
Adrian Thaws, (some know him as Tricky), used to run with the funky Bristolian
Collective known as The Wild Bunch. After years of notoriety in the Bristol club scene The Wild Bunch dissolved, and Tricky, Daddy G and Mushroom bound together to become the wildly popular and influential Massive Attack. Tricky's idiosyncratic raspy voice was peppered all over Massive Attack's first album Blue Lines. Shortly after its release, Tricky began collaborating with Martina Topley-Bird, a colloaboration that would help propel and sustain his career for quite some time.
After putting out "Aftermath" as his first single in 1993, Tricky then signed with 4th and Broadway Records. During this time, Tricky developed a penchant for creating alter-egos by releasing material under different names and side projects. He made a cameo appearance on Massive Attack's second album Protection and released his solo debut Maxinquaye in 1995. Despite its lack of radio play Maxinquaye, a unique mix of Tricky's languished hip-hop lyrics and Martina's sultry vocals, became a huge hit with fans and critics, and charted at number two in the UK charts. The album used well-known rock samples from the likes of The Smashing Pumpkins to Michael Jackson, recombining them in a way that was alluring and new. Tricky toured and began collaborating and remixing songs with other well known artists like Björk, Luscious Jackson and Whale. Later that year, Tricky released Tricky vs. the Gravediggaz, a collaboration with the underground hip-hop heavyweights which spawned the hit single "I Be The Prophet," which was released under the name Starving Souls.
The following year, Tricky collaborated with a slew of successful and respected artists like Alison Moyet, Björk and Neneh Cherry to create the the pseudonymous project, Nearly God. Nearly God proved to be another critical hit among a trend-savvy public. Tricky put out the Grassroots EP later that year to keep his fans satiated, until stunning them a few months later with his enormous hit Pre-Millenium Tension. The album offered Tricky's biggest hit to date, "Christiansands." His dark, seductive music coupled with his laid-back British b-boy attitude begat an apparent musical genre known as "trip hop," a style that Tricky fought to dispel by becoming ever more eclectic and diversified. He made a cameo as an evil henchman in 1997's action blockbuster The Fifth Element, and began to remix for more mainstream artists like Garbage, Bush and even Elvis Costello.
1998 saw the release of Angels With Dirty Faces, an album saturated with the claustrophobia and alienation that Pre-Millenium Tension hinted at. With its quiescent orchestral instruments and looped beats, it showed Tricky entering a more experimental and introspective era. Gone were the recognizeable pop samples that infused previous works - instead we were left with parts of a man intent on deconstruction for the sake of his art. 1999 saw the release of Tricky's most recent album, Juxtapose, a collaboration with DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill and DMX's Grease. Through his own madness and alienation Tricky has created a persona and musical canon worthy of adoration and loving scrutiny. Through his own transgressions, we watch Tricky become.
Vent
Whitfield Spencer writes...
"Tricky's music is altogether alarming and seductive. His raspy voice and
colorful beats make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up whenever I hear him. Aside from the fact that his solo debut of Maxinquaye is one of the greatest albums of the nineties, I feel that
his creative force is something that could only be paralleled with the likes of The Beatles
or Kraftwerk..."
