Compton's in the House With Channel Tres at Art With Me

Thanks to Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, the City of Compton lives on as a sort of mythical gangsta's paradise in everyone's collective imagination. A flamboyant parade of pimps and hoes rolling down the sun-drenched boulevards in convertible lowriders, their hydraulic swagger bouncing to the rhythm of the G-funk in an impossibly expansive cloud of chronic smoke.

But for Sheldon Jerome Young, the 32-year-old hip-house sensation better known as Channel Tres, Compton is a very real place. It’s the place that shaped his work ethic, among other plain virtues possessed by real, everyday people.

“Growing up in Compton was fun, but nothing was easy,” Young tells New Times. “It was me, my little brother, and my great-grandparents, and I had to work for whatever I wanted. I think this has made me very hardworking, and I don’t expect handouts from anyone."

“When I was in the streets, that’s where I got most of the West Coast hip-hop music that we all know and love,” he says of his formative musical influences. Of course, these also include a veritable generational wealth of gospel and jazz. “My grandma made me go to church, so I learned to play piano and drums there. And then, my grandfather was a saxophonist, so we’d listen to jazz music together."

Religion would also shape Young significantly, even leading him to undergraduate studies at Oral Roberts University, a private Christian university in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“Church taught me the spirituality that comes with music,” he explains. “How it can shift, and the atmosphere around it can invite something. You can express yourself and dance in church, and that’s what informs me on how I make my music. It’s about feeling.”
It’s not that big of a leap from gospel to house music, a genre which, after all, has its own religious creation myth in “My House,” as preached by Chuck Roberts with Rhythm Controll in 1987. "In the beginning, there was Jack/And Jack had a groove/And from this groove came the grooves of all grooves" — and every house head knows the rest by heart.

“House music is what freed me to embrace myself in every way,” Young adds. “It’s just about being yourself and having no limits in that expression.”

Perhaps the bigger leap is a kid from Compton making house music. But if there ever was a seemingly impassable cultural divide between West Coast hip-hop’s cliquey machismo and the PLURalist pansexuality of house, Channel Tres has certainly closed it.

Make no mistake, Young may keep it real, but he’s not here to break your suspension of disbelief about Compton being a mythical gangsta’s paradise. He’s actually here to deliver its ultimate party soundtrack, an intoxicating self-styled blend of gangsta rap grandiosity and Chicago house exuberance which he’s dubbed Compton house.

“Compton is the root and will always have a presence in the art I create because it’s a part of who I am,” he says.
“Your body is a game/Fuck lames/Fuck the fame/I am the controller,” his deep baritone voice assures you with unassailable bravado on the breakout single “Controller.” “Throw some sub in that bitch," chants back his faithful call-and-response chorus. "You wanted to find a rhythm that'll make you move.”

"Controller" would receive an Essential New Tune call-out from the preeminent BBC Radio 1 DJ Pete Tong as soon as it dropped in 2018, igniting Channel Tres’ meteoric ascent on the global dance music scene. The string of superlative releases that followed includes collaborations with both hip-hop and house luminaries like Tyler, the Creator and Jamie Jones. It has also garnered fans of the highest distinction, like Elton John, who called Young “a fresh and brilliant singer-songwriter.”

Compton will certainly be in the proverbial house when Channel Tres headlines the Art With Me festival in Virginia Key Beach this weekend. "We’re going to have a great time, maybe hear some new records," Young teases. "I love DJing, and I always love coming out for Art Basel."

Art With Me 2023. With Underworld, Polo & Pan, Channel Tres, Damian Lazarus, Jan Blomqvist, and others. 1 p.m. Friday, December 8, through Sunday, December 10, at Virginia Key Beach Park, 4020 Virginia Beach Dr., Miami; artwithme.org. Tickets cost $49 to $399 via tixr.com; children 12 and under are free.