Channel Tres: ‘House music is for everybody, but it’s special when it’s your people’

Sheldon Young, 31, is not one to be boxed in. Since dropping his debut EP as Channel Tres in 2018, his rhythmic, multi-genre blend has helped him make a name in vibrantly different circles worldwide. He has been absorbed by fellow industry nonconformists – Jpegmafia, Tyler, the Creator, Duckwrth – and the more mainstream; he’s collaborated with Disclosure, Tove Lo and Robyn; and he counts Elton John as a fan.

The artist is in LA when we speak over Zoom, and is laid-back about his ability to traverse genres and scenes, seeming polite and philosophical about his creative process. “Sometimes when I’m in the mall, a certain song will play that’ll influence my music-making,” he says. “I’m always interested in songs that are looped, but you could just listen to them over and over. It’s like: ‘How can I keep people’s attention span?’ That’s always something I’m into.”

Critics have bracketed his music squarely as house, though Young refers to it as “Compton house”. He is largely not genre bound, though; he melds everything from funk, gospel and hip-hop to classic soul and electronic music. Take Unfinished Business, from his 2020 album I Can’t Go Outside, in which luscious chords become a body for some Barry White-like meditations on the nature of pandemic life, or the funk-laced 6am, which counterintuitively given its lyrics about partying all night (“We ain’t leavin’, we ain’t leavin’”), was inspired by a period of sobriety. “I used to be up till 6am, now I’m up at 6am,” he says.

As “Compton house” might indicate, Young hails from the LA-adjacent California city. A quiet child, he had been part of a large household frequented by extended family members, which in part explains the smörgåsbord of musical influences he inhaled. He was “a church kid”, absorbing gospel music, while his great-grandfather had a penchant for jazz, and funk classics by Parliament and Prince came from uncles and cousins, as well as west coast rap.

Music came early; he had gravitated towards rapping in second grade, then producing at age 12, while drumming in church and band class were squeezed in around talent show auditions. He’d long had a taste for the alternative and had been inspired by the skate culture adopted by Pharrell Williams in Nerd, picking up nicknames “little Lupe [in reference to Lupe Fiasco] or little Kanye West”. “I was like a skateboard-slash-hood-adjacent type of person,” he says. “It wasn’t really normal then to dress like that. But I wouldn’t get bothered because people knew me growing up, and what I was into.” He studied music theory at university where he discovered the electronic sounds that would end up being the final jigsaw pieces of his musical style. “It was kind of like a coming-to-Jesus moment,” he says. “I started seeing like, ‘Oh, there’s these Black people creating this type of music? People from London came to Chicago and got this music, and now it’s popular over there?’”

His journey into music was bolstered by a meeting with his father at age 19, who he hadn’t known growing up. “My father was a known gospel musician in Los Angeles,” Young says. “My grandparents and everybody on that side is very, very musical. It helped me realise that I have music in my blood. That gave me the courage to be like: ‘OK, maybe I’m supposed to be doing this.’”

Black pioneers such as the early house proponent Tony Humphries and Detroit auteur Moodymann would give Young tacit permission to blend his identity in a style that felt true. “At the time you had to be ‘hard’ and a certain type of way. I knew I wasn’t like that. I liked to dance, and that wasn’t always cool. When I saw Moodymann and how gangster he was with house music, I was like: ‘Oh, I could do this! I don’t have to give up my whole hood energy.’”

The culture seems to have caught up with him. Young is about to release his sixth EP, Real Cultural Shit, at a time where there is talk of a resurgence of Black house music, piqued by unexpected dabbles by Drake and Beyoncé. Although he believes such talk of a resurgence is largely flawed – for genre-expanders like himself, house music was never out of reach – Young has certainly made waves among Black house fans worldwide, who have previously felt unseen in a genre erroneously understood to be “white”.

He is also making ripples in his own circles. “Now [my family] are all into it,” he smiles. “I got homies sending me house music now. I grew up with [LA singer and musician] Ty Dolla $ign, and I always thought he was just this hard dude; [but now] we’ll be DJing together, dancing, just having a good time and it’s so cool. Like, house music is for everybody. But it’s special when it’s your people.” The focus is on getting his music to as many people as possible – he hopes for “stadiums” in his future – and to continue exploring new creative avenues such as choreography. “​​I see creativity in everything,” he says. “In architecture, cooking, administration work. You have to be creative to problem-solve.”

For now, though, he is using that ingenuity to solve the problems in his own orbit: that of bare dancefloors, stiff limbs and an absence of soul.

Real Cultural Shit is coming soon.