Tricky's always been a difficult artist to pin down, but his latest project, Juxtapose, will evoke some head-scratching among even those who've heard him at his trickiest.| Billed as a collaboration with Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs and noted hip-hop producer Dame Grease (DMX, The Lox), Juxtapose also includes contributions from a handful of other musicians and vocalists, yet it remains dominated by Tricky's trademark rasp and twisted lyrical visions.

In its finished form, the album confounds expectations. Originally, Juxtapose was to have been a fifty-fifty collaboration between Tricky and Muggs, who met a few years back.

"The goal was for it not to sound like Cypress, not to sound like Tricky, not to be either hip-hop or his stuff," Muggs explains. "To just create a new sound for both of us -- to start a new group."

Toward that end, the pair entered Muggs' Los Angeles area studio. "We was experimenting with different things," he continues. "It was easy. Just smokin' herb and makin' beats."

Initial reports suggested the album would be a big step away from the sounds Tricky conjured on his three previous albums. Everything went smoothly, but after laying down twelve tracks, he decided to take the project in a new direction -- one more in line with the moody trip-hop he's been creating since his days with the pioneering British group Massive Attack in the early Eighties.

"The album was basically finished and we wanted to get a pop remix so Def Jam got involved," Muggs recounts. "When we got in there, Def Jam had their whole vision for this thing. That's when the project got twisted around."

At this point, Tricky headed back into a New York studio with Grease. Five tracks from those sessions would end up on the final mix of Juxtapose, while only three of his collaborations with Muggs saw the light of day.

Tricky, who was unavailable to comment for this story, has indicated to the press that he wasn't entirely happy with the tracks he and Muggs came up with. He'd wanted Muggs to bring more of a mainstream hip-hop feel to his decidedly experimental sound -- a goal Muggs says he was unaware of.

"I wasn't trying to make hip-hop for him," Muggs says. "If I was gonna make hip-hop, he would've had straight hip-hop tracks. See, the stuff Grease did, Grease did by himself. The stuff me and him did, we did together."

Grease though, disputes the assertion that Tricky's work with him was less collaborative than his work with Muggs.

"Actually, we worked hand in hand," Grease says. "A couple of tracks we made right there in the studio." Grease had only a cursory familiarity with Tricky's music prior to their working together, but Tricky made it clear why he'd sought Grease out.

"He wanted my 'gutter'-ness," Grease explains. "I do a lot of street music so I wanted to bring that."

Despite being relegated to support status in a project that he was initially an equal partner, Muggs isn't upset at the way the experience played out.

"I wasn't disappointed at all. I would've liked to do a few tracks on my own and have [Tricky] do his thing on 'em, but I had a good time," he says. "It's Tricky's project so it's his vision of what he wanted at that time.

"Tricky's Tricky," he continues. "I wouldn't expect him to not be him. That's why they call him Tricky."

DAVID PEISNER
(August 16, 1999)