"TruCarr" (excerpt from Issue 8: "The Next Gen") by Michael Pofsky
Four years after "Outside," the Watts rapper uses motivation from a personal tragedy to push his career forward.
UNDRGRND Magazine | Sept 10th, 2023
One of the hottest 2023’s in Los Angeles comes the way of Watts, California rapper, TruCarr. Since gaining sizable momentum in 2019 for his hit-single “Outside”, Tru has rolled out a steady catalog as he balances growing his audience while keeping his day-one fans engaged.
“I just got my foot on the gas, I ain’t just about to let up, type shit,” he says. “I feel like last year I wasn’t really in my bag for real. So this year I’m really about to put my all into it.”
Between Dec. 2022 and March 2023, Tru released three installments of his Tru Forever album series—Trials & Tribulations, The Take Over, and On My Time. Most recently, Tru teamed up with Los Angeles hip-hop icon, TeeFLii. In July 2023, the artists dropped TruFlii, a 14-track collab-album featuring DMB DAI, Tapri Grams, Jemouri, and Swifty Blue.
To celebrate the release of the album, TruCarr and TeeFLii hosted a live show at Los Globos on Sunset Blvd.—TruCarr’s first major headlining show in the city. UNDRGRND Magazine partnered up with TruCarr on the production of the Aug. 24th event.
“TruCarr’s ability to curate energy and momentum around a show is what impressed me the most,” said Andrew Mason, co-founder of UNDRGRND Magazine. “He clearly has respect from everyone in LA. Both fellow artists who came out, and just fans in general.”
Many LA rappers tend to fall into a specific style of production and cadence. The unique part about listening to TruCarr is that you get everything about LA in one—the production, features, lingo, culture. Except he delivers it with a Southern swag. TruCarr says he views his Southern style as a tribute to his family from Louisiana and his time spent there as a child. He sees this as an advantage, which can ultimately make him stand out and avoid being boxed in.
As we head into the closing months of 2023, Tru’s all about completing the comeback—the reinvention. He’s maintained his status in the LA rap scene for some time since “Outside” first hit the streets. He admits he needed time away from fully focusing on his career, as he processed the passing of his infant daughter. As a young kid himself, he didn’t know how to deal with such a tragedy.
However, he tells UNDRGRND Magazine that he motivated himself to put absolutely everything into his craft and never give up, under any circumstances. Tru’s got a different hunger and pain in him now, he says.
“My daughter is my fuel.”
