Creek Boyz ended an-already impressive 2017 with an unexpected Lil Yachty remix to their breakout single, “With My Team,” a trap chorale that emphasized the importance of companionship in tough moments. Lil Boat had already broadcasted his fandom for the song on social media and with an added verse, the Baltimore group opened themselves up to a brand new, much broader fan base. But aside from “With My Team,” Creek Boyz are still fairly unknown on the national stage and they’ve yet to formally release a follow up track 10 months after that song’s original release.
Today, the quartet is changing that. They’re back with two new songs that, if you enjoyed “With My Team,” will be exactly what you’ve been waiting for. “Trap Digits” and “Loco” build on the unified harmonizing that made “With My Team” so infectious but with a bounce that’s fit more for the function. “Trap Digits” is a collective instructional on how to earn and flip your cash, with the group punctuating almost every bar with church-like bellowing over delicate flute-play. The beat for “Loco” sounds like it was taken out of Gucci Mane and Zaytoven’s 2009 playbook, and is also about the drive to secure more funds.
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Group members Turk P. Diddy, ETS Breeze, J Reezy, Fedi Mula, and their manager D Boi of 410 Global hopped on the phone with us to discuss the new tracks, the infamous change to the hook of “With My Team,” and to announce their debut mixtape 1:11, which is set to release through 300 on March 2:
Noisey: Considering that “With My Team” was the first song y’all ever recorded together, what was the process of doing an album together? What were the challenges and highlights?
Turk P Diddy: The challenges for the group was making sure everybody was on the same page. That was hardest part of the process in my opinion because it’s four different people it’s not just one artist. It’s multiple. We all have four different minds and trying to keep them coordinated was the hardest thing.
Talk to me about changing the hook on “With My Team” and why you changed it back to the original for the Yachty remix?
Turk: We ain’t release the changed hook on iTunes or dropped it officially. It was just a video.
D Boi: And we wanted to touch the masses. We knew that if we changed the hook that it would get to more people versus just being Baltimore and being stigmatized.
ETS Breeze: We keeping that Baltimore in there, though. Baltimore all day.
I felt like that was one of the things that made it authentically Baltimore was talking about the issues that a lot of people there face.
ETS Breeze: One of the main reasons we did that was to make it universal because people die everywhere, you feel me? It’s not just us. But at the end of the day, we speaking on our struggle and where we came from.
Turk: It’s just reached other people that it probably wouldn’t have with the Baltimore version.
There’s a lot of music bubbling in Baltimore but the dynamic of you all singing in unison really distinguishes you from the pack. Is that something that went into the decision to come together? Being something completely different?
J Reezy: We all friends—well brothers actually—so it was like, it would be cool if we all got in the studio and made a song together. We didn’t have this intention in the beginning. We was just doing it for fun.
ETS Breeze: It was an idea of Turk’s at first. I started singing. We all tried singing on our own and it was cool but it wasn’t popping. So it was like, what if we all put some sauce on it and hop on here? So we made it a banger. People liked the unique sound. We liked it. So that’s what we is. We the trap choir.
Talk about your new two songs, “Trap Digits” and “Loco.” How’d those come together?
ETS Breeze: “Trap Digits” is a street joint. It’s for the clubs. “Loco,” we love that song. With “Trap Digits,” Fedi Mula and J Reezy combined on there and put that hook together for us.
Is there anything on the 1:11 tape that people haven’t witnessed yet from Creek Boyz?
ETS Breeze: “With My Team” was more of a radio song. So “Trap Digits” we trying to get more into the clubs and get everybody. We trying to touch all bases with the album. We don’t want you to think we just make one type of music. We make all types.
Turk P. Diddy: Creek Boyz are far from one-hit-wonders. That’s one of the burdens is that we haven’t gave nobody no other songs. We gave them a couple but they was just songs that we really didn’t care about. We can’t let them hear everything.
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