Just want to hear some music? Skip to the bottom for two tracks by Tree.
Johnson built Sunday School largely out of samples, often from classic soul songs, but his technique departs from the usual blueprint. He chops them up, processes them, and pieces them together, using odd edits and slight dissonances, so that they interweave and overlap in a way that can feel slightly “off,” though they’re never actually out of time with his lean, pulsing drum patterns. The effect is almost the opposite of a head-nodding groove—its strangeness, instability, and tension is a big part of what makes Johnson’s music so magnetic. “He broke down the way that you make a sample-based rap record,” Nosnitsky says, “and rebuilt it from scratch.”
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Johnson’s rhymes are thoughtful and impassioned, and he delivers them in a grainy, powerful voice that breaks up into a searing rasp when he reaches for an emotional peak. He’s definitely a rapper, not a singer, but he sometimes talk-sings or holds notes, and you can hear evidence of his years at the Chicago Salem church—the grand melodies, the gospel fervor, the stacked vocal parts that sometimes sound like a choir cutting loose. That’s part of the reason he named the mixtape Sunday School, he says: “It was almost like some of the songs were just like church.” Shortly after the mixtape came out, he gave his sound a name and a Twitter hashtag—soul trap.
The Gangster Disciples ruled the roost in the Wild End, but the family was now in King Cobras turf. This was rough on the older boys, who were affiliated with the GDs—the two gangs were at war. But Johnson’s brothers kept him out of trouble, at least at first. “They wouldn’t let me hang with them and wouldn’t let me be in the popular crowd,” he says. This helped him make friends with people he otherwise might’ve considered enemies.
In 2009 Lennon from Project Mayhem introduced Tree’s music to Andrew Barber, founder of Chicago hip-hop blog Fake Shore Drive. “He would always say, ‘Yeah, we’re dope, but you gotta check out this new guy that we’re working with—his name is Tree,” Barber says. “Immediately I was a fan.” Fake Shore Drive became one of the earliest outlets to cover Johnson, beginning with his first official mixtape, 2010’s The Third Floor.
The secret is starting to get out. Nosnitsky’s mixtape list for MTV Hive has proved to be a great look for Johnson. “That MTV tag was worth my $110,000 401(k) money,” he says. (At the end of May, Johnson released a deluxe version of Sunday School, adding two tracks, the MTV logo, and the words “One of MTV’s top 5 mixtapes of the year.”) Nosnitsky points out that the high ranking Sunday School got is just one writer’s opinion, not evidence that MTV’s bigwigs have decided to back Tree—but they probably should.
Fri 8/24, 11 PM, Underground Wonder Bar, $7.
Project Mayhem with Tree, Dance Floor Junkies, Lili K., John Blu, DJ That’s Broadway
Thu 8/30, 8 PM, Red Kiva, 1108 W. Randolph, 312-226-5577, $10, free before 9 PM.
