In the seven years since the release of his debut mixtape NXB, the London-based vocalist Triad God has hardly been seen or heard. While NXB developed something of a cult following and eventually received a proper rollout from now-defunct label Hippos in Tanks, its creator remained cloaked in mystery. Triad God may have made perfect sense alongside a roster that included Dean Blunt, James Ferraro, and Yung Lean, but he's avoided those artists' paths to wider recognition.
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In the seven years since the release of his debut mixtape NXB, the London-based vocalist Triad God has hardly been seen or heard. While NXB developed something of a cult following and eventually received a proper rollout from now-defunct label Hippos in Tanks, its creator remained cloaked in mystery. Triad God may have made perfect sense alongside a roster that included Dean Blunt, James Ferraro, and Yung Lean, but he's avoided those artists' paths to wider recognition. Second album Triad, released on Lorenzo Senni's Presto!? label, is the first sign of life from Triad God in almost four years. We know about as much about him in 2019 as we did in 2012. There are no in-depth interviews with Triad God, and no video except a FACT Magazine freestyle filmed in London’s Chinatown and some brief camcorder footage posted to his official YouTube channel. We know, from a fleeting conversation with Dazed, that his given name is Vinh Ngan, that he’s from New Cross, London, that he’s of Chinese and Vietnamese heritage, and that he enjoys “Chinese love songs” and Tupac. Though NXB was loosely described as “rap,” Triad God's vocals, delivered in both Cantonese and English, are a surreal blend of singing, rapping, and voiceover narration. He mutters, mumbles, coos, croaks, whispers; if he’s rapping, it’s less of a flow and more of a trickle. Whatever you call it, it’s a deeply intimate and confessional mode of delivery, somewhere between the monologue in a Terrence Malick movie and Lil B’s spoken-word album Rain in England.
