“On the Phone” is the latest single release from Newport News based hip-hop talent S-Trill and it promises to open up whole new worlds for this prodigiously gifted performer. He’s still young and looks forward to years of development ahead. S-Trill is coming out of his corner fast as a confident and commanding presence capable of handling a variety of material despite his relatively brief lifespan.
The Richmond, Virginia native namechecks Jay Z, TI, Young Jeezy, and Goldee Heart among his musical influences and he’s learned his lessons well – there isn’t a single note in “On the Phone” that doesn’t bear that fact out with entertaining results. S-Trill’s musical talents are sharply in the ascendant and he’s surrounded himself with a cadre of talented collaborators, family, and friends who are pushing him to even greater heights. S-Trill will be around for many years to come and getting in near the ground floor with an experience like this will undoubtedly prove memorable and special.
It’s a track to remember for 2017 and its effect on S-Trill’s career will reverberate long into 2018. The daring confluence of so many ideas, both musical and vocal, within a three-minute song serves notice that this young performer believes himself capable of making the music do anything he pleases. You can hear that blossoming confidence come across in how he uses multiple voices, the unexpected instrumentation like piano and strings mingling with a low hung, moody backing rhythm track and the deft embellishments often briefly flashing through the mix.
He brings this all together within the aforementioned running time without ever allowing anything to come off as rushed or sloppy. It’s the sort of command over your material that we expect from much more experienced writers and performers, but S-Trill clearly entered the studio to cut this song knowing exactly how he wanted the finished results to sound.
S-Trill Is On The Rise
The lyrics bear a similar individual stamp and recall the material of his influences without ever seeming like a slavish imitator. His ability to bring them further to life through his vocal style is another of the song’s key strengths and they gain much from the stresses he brings to particular words. The music and voices sync up rather nicely throughout; this is a consistent hallmark of S-Trill’s work and one we can fully expect will only continue to define its best qualities more and more with the passage of time.
The single “On the Phone” is a crackling, stylish release from a young performer whose future seems boundless – such hype in the music world is common, admittedly, but wholly justified here. S-Trill’s influence may or may not eventually reach the level of his self-professed models, but he’s definitely off to a start leading him in that direction years from now.
Find S-Trill on iTunes or SONGVAULT
-review by Joshua Stryde
