SoulTrash is a musical collective consisting of 3 MCs and 3 DJs from the South East of Amsterdam. In December the group won the “Grote Prijs Van Nederland” (a prestigious award in the Dutch music scene) for Best Act in the Hip Hop category. And as if that wasn’t enough, they recently released their first music video ‘Badman a roll out’. Since SoulTrash will come and perform for us at Current Skies, we thought it was about time to find out some more about them.
CRZE:
“Since we won this award, people have started to notice us more. The collective started rehearsing with five members, and when the sixth and youngest (seventeen year old ‘BLOK’) officially joined the group, SoulTrash was a fact.”
“SoulTrash member Bri had been organizing beat workshops in No Limit, a community center in our neighborhood. He told us everyone was welcome to drop by. When we got together, we started to notice a good vibe going on. We really created some cool stuff together. When the workshop ended, we kept in contact and continued to jam together.”
The group experimented and practiced for over a year until their first track ‘Buck’ debuted in February 2016. That was the moment the boys formally presented themselves to the world as SoulTrash.
All of the members grew up in Amsterdam’s South East, their fountain of endless inspiration.
CRZE:
“If we’d grown up someplace else, our sound would be completely different. In every track we refer to our hood in some way or another. Even from the way we write you can tell that we’re based here. In the Bijlmer area (South East) it’s very common to mix up the letters in words. For example: Praten (Dutch word for ‘talking’) will become ‘tarpen’.”
But it’s not only the beats and lyrics that are very ‘South East-like’. What’s way more important is the feeling SoulTrash creates with their music.
The guys from SoulTrash become inspired by the tiniest of things. A simple slogan can be the beginning of an entire concept.
BLOK:
“CRZE had a slogan “badman a roll out” which means something like ‘I’m out’. Every time he was done rehearsing or whatever he used to say that. We liked the sound of that so we build a whole track around it. And on the 13th of February we released our first clip, based on this track”
Whether it’s a slogan, a beat or a vibe, every member of SoulTrash adds something unique to the collective.
TANDISO MILAN:
“When they talk about us a lot of people mention a ‘Hip Hop formation’. Of course, we do make Hip Hop, but there’s a lot of different styles of music that merge into our tracks”
BRI:
“We aim to reach a large and diverse crowd. We do not conform to our audience but we let the audience get acquainted with our style, by convincing them we are where the party’s at”
“Recently, we played at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. This is not our standard audience. These were older people that were actually there to listen to classical music. We figured it would not be an ‘easy’ crowd to play for and were completely taken by surprise when they responded to our music with great enthusiasm. It’s so cool to see your music hit it off with a crowd, especially when you didn’t predict this at all.”
Whenever the group creates something new, they can be quite strict with each other.
TANDISO MILAN:
“We’re constantly brainstorming and everyone has their own demands. They know what I’m capable of and they’re not afraid to be blunt about it. That’s how we keep each other sharp.”
SoulTrash dreams of a bright future, playing gigs all around the world.
CRZE:
“We want to create ‘buzz’ by releasing more songs and music videos. But we would like to choose our moments more tactical when it comes to this. We really aspire to conquer the world and don’t want to let borders hold us back. We’re not going to limit us to the Netherlands and we’ll pursue anything that’s possible’’
SoulTrash hopes to one day perform on the stages of Lowlands, Wireless, and even Mysteryland. They strive to one day perform for a huge Hip Hop festival like Moha, London.
CRZE:
“I would love to create the first mosh pit at North Sea Jazz”.
For more info about the event click here.
Text: Yalou Slöetjes
Photography: Janneke Nooij
