Written by: Oliver Heffron
Fresco Trey is the next rising star out of Memphis, albeit his glean is a different hue than the city's used to. With expressive lyricism and polished R&B melodies, Trey's music swerves away from the contemporary club-banging trap artists coming out of the city into more emotional and narrative avenues on tracks like "Fresh Off A Heartbreak" and "Need You" off his breakout EPs Heartbreak Diaries 1 and Heartbreak Diaries 2.
After gaining momentum with a particular sound on the Heartbreak Diaries series, Fresco Trey embraces the scenic route on his new EP Detour, expressing a more upbeat and hopeful perspective as he experiments with his R&B sound. From the atmospheric ambition of "Shooting Star," to the laid-back luxury of "Passenger Princess (feat. NLE Choppa)" to the untouchable confidence of "Bad Bitches," Trey displays his range and versatility while remaining true to the authentic core of his music.
Fresco Trey took some time out of his holiday to catch up with NUANCE, where we discussed his upbringing in Memphis, developing his authentic R&B sound, and his putting together his new EP Detour.
Fresco Trey grew up in White Haven, a working-class neighborhood in South Memphis best known for being the home of Graceland, which he describes as a "fun, wicked place…You had your fun, but it was also not safe to do a lot of stuff." Trey found his outlet on the basketball court, excelling and dedicating most of his time as a kid playing AAU circuits with and against future NBA talent like Darius Garland, James Wiseman, and Thomas Bryant. "That was really my whole childhood in Memphis: playing basketball."
Photo credit: Noah Morrell
While Fresco Trey was solely focused on basketball up until he was 18, music slowly worked its way into his life as a teenager through the influence of his older sister–a singer who goes by Ashley Ave.: "Whenever she would pick me up from school, she would be going to the studio. I started being aware and I started loving the process. When I graduated high school, I just started making my own songs. She had bought me some setup, and I would be downstairs in my basement teaching myself how to record myself and mix a master and stuff like that. So it just took my mind off basketball."
Fresco Trey left basketball behind, but the work ethic he learned on the court has helped him successfully transition to the studio. While his music centers an impressive vocal talent, he explains that singing was not a natural skill: "I had to work at it. I couldn't sing but always freestyle since I was five or six, but I never could sing. So that was something I taught myself over the course of me singing for five years."
Trey also takes a methodical approach to his studio sessions: "Normally, how I do my sessions is I try to get at least three songs in every session. My first song is just like a warm-up song, so I just go in there and get juices out. Then the next two songs are more orchestrated and structured." Trey's mindset fits like a glove in a city that celebrates grit and grind.
As displayed in the first two volumes of his Heartbreak Diaries, Fresco Trey's sound centers on expressive lyrical depictions of heartbreak over production that emphasizes instrumentation like acoustic guitars and pianos with a contemporary bounce.
The unteachable quality that sets Fresco Trey's music apart is an authenticity that translates through the songs. It's one thing to hear an R&B singer lament about love and quite another when you sincerely believe and empathize with them.
When asked why he thinks people feel that sense of authenticity from his music, Trey explains, "I feel like people take that away from it because that's what it is, me being myself. Not trying to make up a story or force a story that's not there. It's just me honest about whatever I'm going through or what's going on and what headspace I'm in at that point in time."
While Trey will be returning to that emotional R&B sound with his upcoming Heartbreak Diaries 3, he explains that his latest EP Detour was a necessary emotional switch-up as he develops his catalog and experiments with new tones: "Detour was about wanting to make a more uptempo, happier vibe of music. That's why I called it ‘detour’ because I'm not going away from it 100%, it was just a quick detour into a different lane."
The furthest point on Detour from Fresco Trey's usual somber shade might be the sunny, laid-back West Coast jam "Got You" featuring pop-singer charlieonafriday and the internet's favorite ukulelist einer bankz. Trey explains how the track came together on a whim while he was out in California with bankz: "I was at Einer's house one day, and I had been listening to this song by Drake, 'Just Hold On, We're Going Home.' That kind of vibe was in my head, so he was just playing guitar and gave me a reference and we just made the song around that."
On the track "Passenger Princess," Trey flexes his lyrical abilities, going bar for melodic bar with Warner Records labelmate NLE Choppa over the lofty, luxurious instrumental. He explains how the track came from one of his "warm-up songs" being appreciated by his team: "That was the first song I did in a session, and I just did it in like 20 minutes. I sent it to my A&R, and she said, 'Bro, this song is fire… We're gonna get Choppa on it." Trey describes how the collab was a full-circle moment for both artists who hooped together as teens: "Me and Choppa were in the same basketball scene together, so we've known eachother since we were like 14."
Discussing which artists Trey would like to work with in the future, he doesn't cut his potential short: "An artist like Post Malone–he's my favorite artist of all time. I wanna do stuff with Drake, Rod Wave, I wanna do a song with Adele. Those are the top artists for me."
Preparing for his next release, Heartbreak Diaries 3, Trey couldn't be more excited to share his next project: "I put the most effort into it. I'm not filtering any of the stories shared within this project, and I feel like it's gonna cut people deep. All the stories that I went through… I'm gonna paint a picture of what happened. So that's what I'm excited for."