On her remix of Charli XCX’s Brat hit “Club Classics,” the 24-year-old Barcelona-based rapper Bb Trickz arrives like she’s been there all along, rapping in a comfortable, laid-back Spanish with the cool swagger of a veteran—this despite only starting to release music in the past few years. Over Zoom, she tells me she’s happy to have a woman as influential as Charli XCX show support. “I think it’s very special that another woman that’s so talented, and someone I can look up to, believes in me and fucks with what I do,” Trickz says.
Born Belize Kazi in Barcelona, Spain, Trickz first gained attention with music video snippets on TikTok. Early on, she displayed a confident flow that stood in stark contrast to her dripped-out Disney princess appearance. Of course, that dissonance between her look and sound also brought out detractors, unwilling to take a young girl like Trickz seriously as a rapper. “There’s also the side of the internet, which just hates me,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “There’s always the evil side with me. They love to hate women, but it’s all good.”
Trickz’s father worked as a producer, and despite his one music industry connection politely telling Trickz they didn’t think her music was good enough (“He was wrong,” she laughs), online haters seem fixated on nepo baby allegations. “I knew I was going to create reactions to people, and I mean, it’s part of it. It’s never really been like, I’ve never taken it personally,” she says. “Sometimes it gets tiring when it’s like, ‘Damn, I’ve actually just really worked hard to get to where I’m at,’ and it’s disregarded in a second with one comment. But at the same time, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Growing up, Trickz’s father would play vinyl around the house, and she remembers developing an affinity for hip-hop around the age of 12. What attracted her to the genre were the lyrics’ inventive entendrés and rhythmic wordplay. “I just thought it was interesting because when you rap, you’re actually saying double the words as a pop record,” she says. “I’ve always liked writing, so it was very interesting to me listening to what they had to say and how they rhymed.”
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The way she tells it, Trickz knew early on she was not going to have a traditional 9-5 career. Even before she finished high school, she was working on figuring out a way to make music work. “I actually just looked around my friends — I had engineer friends, I had producer friends, so I just started trying to make music,” she says. “My best friend told me I should rap, and I was like, ‘I don’t know how to rap.’ He was just like, ‘Say the first thing that comes to your head.’ I freestyled for the first time and realized how much fun it was and how I was happy doing that. So I made it my goal to make music and make it my career.”
On her early releases, Trickz displayed a charisma and vocal dexterity that felt effortless — something of a cross between Ice Spice’s natural charm and Veeze’s easy swagger. After a few viral videos caught traction in 2022, she dropped the song and music video for “Viva España,” an almost tongue-in-cheek earworm that quickly became one of her biggest hits.
“Things were kind of calm, quiet down and I was like, ‘What’s the worst song I can drop now that people are not going to like it?’ That song to me, the way I was rapping, I was screaming, and I didn’t like how it sounded, but actually, a lot of people liked that record, and the idea was just kind of like I wanted to do something simple,” she explains. “I thought it would be funny too because people always think I’m like this ‘pija,’ which means rich, bougie girl. So I thought it’d be funny if I made it a party of Spanish rich kids. I thought it would just be funny to have the way that record sounds and then just have the visuals be kind of the opposite.”
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She’s remarkably zen about one of her biggest songs being one she didn’t particularly care for. “It’s always like that. The ones that maybe are not artistically my favorites are always the ones that people like the most.”
These days, Trickz gravitates towards the sounds currently bubbling in New York City. Her 2023 EP Sadtrickz is an infectious take on the kind of slow-rolling drill that Cash Cobain successfully dominated this past summer with. The Bronx-born producer even has a credit on the project, for the aptly titled “Cash Cobain.” But Trickz’s music isn’t merely cross-continental appropriation. The way she raps in her native Spanish manages to tread unexplored terrain, carving out new rhythmic corners on familiar-sounding beats, creating something entirely new in the process. “The beat selection came from what I listened to, which is American rap,” she explains. “But then the way I was rapping, the words I was choosing to use and stuff, it is very Spanish. It’s very what I know. There’s a good mixture.”
Trickz is the kind of international crossover increasingly possible thanks to the global reach of TikTok’s “For You” Page. She’s keenly aware of the platform’s reach and has thus far cultivated an entire universe around her releases, all of which get music video treatments that are cut, spliced, and snippeted across social media. “I started off on snippet-ing on TikTok. That’s what got attention and eyes on me and honestly. I dropped a music video, and I think three days later, I dropped my first EP,” she says. “It was also somewhat strategic. I didn’t want to drop music without people being interested in it. That’s why I chose TikTok. I never used TikTok before. I feel like the world we live in now is the best place to promote whatever you’re doing. And it’s free.”
Being a social media star didn’t necessarily come naturally. Trickz says she was “super anti-social” growing up, and it was only her pursuit of music that got her out of her comfort zone. She still likes to keep things close to her chest, working mainly with the same friends she came up with. “Most of my videos, me and my friends will actually sit down and edit them ourselves. I’m super picky,” she says.
Her newfound viral success has introduced Trickz to some of her favorite artists, too. She’s collaborated with Karrahbooo on the single “Pharell” from August, and she popped up alongside Babyface Ray in Veeze’s “Overseas Baller” music video. “They’ve actually dropped music,” she says of Veeze and Karrahbooo. “They’ve always supported me and always sent encouraging messages and vice versa. It makes me happy knowing that I’m not alone doing this.”
Growing up, Trickz’s friends who made music taught her the importance of authentic, creative friendships. “One of the first things I realized is like, ‘Oh if I ever make music, I don’t want yes men in my studio.’ Because I saw it as a clear problem of some people bringing their homies that don’t know how to say shit how it is, they’re not truthful or real, so they just think their opinion,” she says. “I always try to bring my most judgey friends to the studio.”
As she works on her next EP, Trickz says she’d like to tap into more of the club-ready sounds fans heard on the Charli XCX remix. She says she’d like to work with George Daniel, who produced the Brat remix. “I think he’s really talented. I’m definitely always open to trying all sorts of genres,” she says. “What I like about me is I can be myself in any sound, and it still feels like I’m being me. It’s still Bb.”
That much is true. In a short time, Trickz has been able to carve out a lane all her own. “Something I realized I’m pretty good at communicating with the public,” she says. “So, at the beginning, I would have 40-minute shows, and I probably had 20 minutes of music to play. I would have to fill up 20 minutes of me just talking. So it was kind of like a comedy club where I would just improvise.”
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Now, she says, she wants to have the kind of distinctive live experience that artists like Travis Scott have. “I would like for my fans to when they come to my show to kind of know what they’re getting into. How Travis Scott has a show, and everyone knows that they’re there to jump around and go crazy,” she explains.
So, what should we expect from a Bb Trickz show? “Definitely laugh,” she says. “And also jump around and go crazy.”
