Channel Tres emerged in 2017 with the single “Controller,” an effortless slice of hip-house that sounded like Dâm-Funk mixed with Todd Terje and infused with the swaggering bodaciousness of West Coast rap. The five songs on his self-titled EP extolled the virtues of life’s simplest pleasures—driving with the top down, drinking Hennessey, and stealing your girl—with ounces of bounce to spare. Lyrically, Channel Tres often shares less with the G-funk of his native South Central, a regular sonic reference point in his instrumentals, and more with the gleefully vulgar, verging-on-pornographic tracks of Detroit ghettotech producers like DJ Assault.
Channel Tres’ second EP adopts an almost identical structure to his first. Both are five tracks in length, and each opens with dreamy, warbly intros just over a minute long. As on his debut, the order of the day here is the scintillating blend of hip-house that Godmode, also home to Yaeji, has come to specialize in. Though Channel Tres’ most obvious reference points are Moodymann and Galcher Lustwerk, the twinkling flutes, rumbling congas, and clean bass guitar on a song like “Brilliant Nigga” echo house classics like Larry Heard’s “And So I Dance” or Deep Aural Penetration’s “Into the Kick With Tito,” while the whining synths and regional roll call on “Sexy Black Timberlake” recall Channel Tres’ roots in California funk.
Channel Tres comes from the Lil B school of songwriting; comparisons to various celebrities abound. “Sexy Black Timberlake” assumes the mantle of Justin Timberlake; on “Raw Power,” a bit of performative shirtlessness makes him feel like Iggy Pop on the cover of (you guessed it) Raw Power. The EP’s title inevitably invokes the soulful aura of Isaac Hayes. Even when he insists it “ain’t about me,” Channel Tres’ subject is pretty much always himself.
Like his production style, Channel Tres’ voice is heavy on the low end, clinging to the gruffer side of his register. His strength is timbre, not technical flow, and he’s much more adept as a tour guide to a dubby soundscape than eyewitness to events. On Channel Tres, that quality oozed charisma; here, it just sounds like a little too much cough syrup. The limits of his languid flow are most apparent on “Black Moses,” which features a welcome interruption from JPEGMAFIA. Hostile and high-pitched, JPEG’s delivery has a dangerous energy that can’t be captured in a bottle. Channel Tres sounds over-the-counter by comparison.
Black Moses isn’t a tremendous step forward for Channel Tres, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing for an artist who emerged almost out of nowhere two years ago and still hasn’t released a full-length album. But it’s beginning to look like he is being underserved by his chosen format. Though part of the appeal of Channel Tres’ music is his ability to distill the feeling of a deep groove into a pop-sized package, some of his rhythms demand more than just a few minites on the dancefloor. These songs all yearn for an extended remix by Kerri Chandler or Masters at Work—maybe it’s time to stop echoing Moodymann and start cutting him a check.
