NextGen Spotlight: Lil Trubz

The EP features artists and producers from the Tracks on Tap community. How did you select who to work with?
We set up sessions with artists who we thought would work well together and who we, as well as the community, would be excited to see on a song together. We initially planned to have different producers on each song but then ended up wanted to have a consistent sound the whole way through the project so we thought it would make sense to have Swiss Mafia produce the whole project and push the vision forward with us. The artists changed each song, but the producers stayed the same. We ran our first session with Swiss Mafia (made up of two individuals Jon Lekole and Marco Ciocca aka Balthazard) who blew us away with their talent and energy - after that session we decided they would produce the whole EP.

What was the creative process like for the EP? How did you balance your creative vision with the input from multiple collaborators?
Having the producer duo produce the whole tape made it seamless. They understood our vision and between us and them, we translated this vision to the artists collaborating on the songs and the rest was history. We were leaving every session with a song we were extremely happy with.

The EP received so much chart success and radio play. Were you expecting such a reception, and how did it feel?
We had belief that we could potentially reach the Top 10 in the UK iTunes Charts if we got the community behind it and supporting it but we genuinely did not expect to reach #1 - at least not as quick as we did. We hit the #1 spot on the UK iTunes Hip Hop and Rap Charts on the day the project came out and we held that spot for over 72 hours. We also went #2 in Switzerland’s iTunes Charts across all genres - with a healthy push from our producer duo Swiss Mafia who are originally from Switzerland. We hope to create another project and chart with that too!

How did you leverage social media to engage with your audience during the lead-up to the EP release?
We were pushing pre-saves quite hard - directing people to the link in our bio through collaboration posts between ourselves along with the artists and producers who featured on the EP. We also announced as soon as we hit #3 in the iTunes Charts, which gave people the belief that we could reach number 1, in turn encouraging them to actually purchase the EP and get us there! We done a small listening party at Pirate Studios with some of our closest community members and we documented this leading up to our EP Launch Party which was the first time the majority of our audience got to hear the music live and we also pushed highlights and clips of the night on our social media too. Using the sounds of the music on Instagram story was also useful and a good way to keep the push going!

What did you learn from the whole project? Would you have done anything differently if you were to do it again?
As it was our first time ever doing something like this, the process was very much very trial and error. I learnt a lot about managing people - specifically how difficult it is to get groups of people with very different schedules all together at one time. Also, finishing the project. Starting is always the most exciting part and finishing is always the toughest part. Again, it was the first time we executed a project like this, so we got to points where it was unknown to us and had to find our way to navigate through - together - in collaboration. I think next time we’d just use the learnings from trialling and erroring the process to create a better structure for getting things done, with the knowledge we now have, to smoothen out the process from start to completion.

What advice do you have for other young creatives when it comes to building networks and a community?
Time > money. There are things you can earn from a time investment which money can’t buy. Community building doesn’t have a price attached to it. Keep it as organic as possible, don’t say yes to everyone and everything, stick to your roots and never forget why you started in the first place. The vision is important and not everything you encounter across the way will fit into your vision and that’s ok. Keep it organic! The vision, the reason you started, will hopefully always be a driving force for you.