Music

Toronto's Tre Mission brings British grime to Canadian shores

by Jabbari Weekes

To hear Toronto grime rapper/producer Tre Mission recall a dream featuring his musical idol, Bob Marley, it sounds like a break-in by a deranged magician. “He just came in and magic started happening, shit was flying off my drawers going nuts,” he remembers. “You know in [the movie] Matilda when everything starts going crazy? That’s what it was like. It was bare fuckery.”

“At a point in my life there was music, and there was Bob Marley, and nothing else compared. If it wasn’t for his influence I don’t think that I would be doing anything right now.”

Almost an anomaly in the increasingly crowded Toronto hip hop scene, Tre—born and raised in the city—fully embraces the sound of the British subgenre grime, known for its rapid-fire lyrical delivery and energetic, disgruntled mashup of genres like garage, hip-hop, dancehall, and drum and bass. During an episode of Muchmusic’s alternative video show The Wedge, a young Tre came across breakout grime MC Dizzee Rascall’s “I Luv U,” a song he recalls he didn’t even like at first.

“When I first saw Dizzee Rascall, I didn’t really take a liking to the song I heard,” he says. “But I just remembered it sticking in my head, like, ‘what the fuck was that?’”

In 2010, with his sly wordplay and menacing delivery, Tre started dropping heat-seeking freestyles like “Hold Up,” attracting attention online and across the pond from UK tastemakers like DJ Tim Westwood and peers like JME, Skepta, and Wiley. Looking to capitalize on his buzz—and against his better instincts—he dropped his first EP, Practice Mission. A true perfectionist, even several mixtapes later, he felt his early material did not reflect his real talent.

When he eventually ended up overseas, Tre holed himself up in a hotel with the sole mission to create a body of work that would make an impact as his debut album, Malmaison.

“Every artist that has a real fan base has that first album that solidifies that core, and I felt like those [projects] happened naturally, so I just did [the album] with that in mind.”

In the first seconds of opener “Introdeuce,” the rapper re-introduces himself with a new landscape of booming synths and bass drums, before bursting open with sharp lyrics that take an introspective look into the ups and downs of his life. Pushing past the confines of grime and rap, Tre dots the album with instrumentals like “Got Me Too,” while standout “Flashlight Woah” serves as the crux of the album, shining a spotlight on friends either dead or in jail.

While many are quick to title Tre as some vanguard of grime music in Toronto, he makes it clear that his only interest is being the best at being different from everyone else.

“It just happens to be what I do. It’s like, you can live on your block and everybody plays basketball, but you play soccer. You’re not going to start some next thing. You just go to your soccer game, and they go to their basketball game.”