Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Trap Jazz’ on Hulu, A Doc About Three Atlanta Musicians Blazing A New Trail Of Creative Expression

Trap Jazz (now streaming on Hulu) takes us to Atlanta, Georgia, where musicians and childhood pals Chris Moten, Cassius Jay, and Devon “Stixx” Taylor have drawn on the distinctive rhythms and themes of trap music, a style that was born and boomed in the ATL, and combined it with the melodies and traditions of jazz. The result, as filmmaker Sadé Clacken Joseph’s new documentary depicts, is Trap Jazz – a band, a sound, and a collective, tuned in to Moten, Jay, and Taylor as players, but also informed by Atlanta as its ideological homebase. Interviews with its featured subjects and their families combine with a little bit of reenactment in Trap Jazz, which also includes appearances by T.I., Trouble, Zaytoven, Ray Murray, Lala Hathaway, and Quincy Jones.   

TRAP JAZZ: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: Growing up in the Atlanta area, Chris Moten, Joshua “Cassius Jay” Cross, and Devon “Stixx” Taylor each came to the musician’s craft, with Moten gravitating to piano, Jay to the organ, and Taylor living up to his nickname from a very young age. And while they’ve each made a name for themselves professionally – including Jay’s work as an in-demand producer with a focus on trap beats, and Taylor as Justin Bieber’s drummer – Moten envisioned the Trap Jazz project as something much more personal. Not just a paying pro gig as a sideman, or handling production for an artist out front, but exploring their own distinct sound as players and pals. A cross-hatch genre was born. “I just remember Chris coming up with the whole idea,” Jay says in Trap Jazz, “and I ain’t even have a clue how he was finna do this. All I knew was I know how to make beats.”  

Trap Jazz is broken into three chapters – “Our Father,” “Old Meets New,” and “Legacy” – and includes “Creating a Genre” as a prelude. As we join Moten in his home studio, he says the name is exactly what it sounds like. “Eclectic improvisation mixed with street gutter sounds.” The familiar melodies and breaks of jazz, blended with the skittering hi-hats, delay effects, and drum machine triggers of trap, the style named for drug houses and the surrounding street culture, born in Atlanta before it fueled chart hits from Drake, Cardi B, Bieber, Ariana Grande, and countless others. And sparking up a blunt, Moten proceeds to manipulate and mesh an internet recording of the Duke Ellington swing jazz standard “Take the ‘A’ Train” into trap beats he plays live in his studio.

Trap jazz the music draws its influence from the streets that surround them. But Trap Jazz the doc also emphasizes the profound importance of the church and church music in its subjects’ lives. “That’s where I got my start,” says Taylor, who grew up in his pastor father’s church – we see VHS footage of him crushing fills on the kit as a nine-year-old – and it’s where all three musicians were able to explore their musical talent and find kinship with one another. (Reenactments depict Moten and Jay reveling in the radio and 1980s keyboard technology as adolescents.) It becomes a legacy thing, their pursuit of Trap Jazz as a band – accessing and celebrating where they came from, while leaving their signature on music going forward. And as the doc drives toward its final chapter, Moten, Jay, and Taylor seize an opportunity to perform Trap Jazz-ed versions of Quincy Jones’ music with the legend himself in the room. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The Art of Organized Noize was a 2016 doc about the Atlanta production team behind a wealth of Dirty South and other hip-hop classics; it has been known to stream on Netflix. And Rap Trap: Hip Hop on Trial (Hulu) explored how a criminal case against Atlanta-bred rappers Young Thug and Gunna unfairly characterized their lyricism and creativity.

Performance Worth Watching: In interviews, Chris Moten, Cassius Jay, and Devon “Stixx” Taylor prove to be thoughtful, forthright, and more than willing to show scars. But Trap Jazz is also great at illustrating their internal dynamic. This is a trio of pals who’ve known each other – and each other’s foibles – for a long, long time. It’s interesting to see them navigate those relationships in a professional sense as the work continues to get the Trap Jazz combo up and running.

Memorable Dialogue: Trap, as a sound, is a natural progression. Or as Grammy-winning singer Lala Hathaway puts it, “Jazz, rhythm & blues, funk, fusion, hip-hop, trap; they are all an expression from the street, from people saying, ‘Here’s what we wanna put into this.’” 

Sex and Skin: “Strippers play a real big role in trap music,” Cassius Jay says over a few relatively tame shots of dancers in the club. “Because without the strippers, the DJs wouldn’t even know about certain songs. So when I used to make trap music, first thing I used to do is get my song, I mixed it, took it to a strip club, and all the strippers started dancing to it. If you can get a girl to shake they ass to the music, you got a hit.” 

Our Take: The “Our Father” chapter in Trap Jazz is often where this documentary is at its most powerful. We see Devon “Stixx” Taylor playing drums in church as an adult and as a little kid, and hear the pride in his father’s voice as the pastor beams at God’s work, blessing his son with this talent. Cassius Jay speaks with reverence about his own father, also a minister, who died suddenly in his youth and has forever remained Jay’s biggest influence as a producer and player. And Jay gives props to Chris Moten’s dad, who was well known in the Atlanta area as the premiere organist in an expressive style known as COGIC – Church of God in Christ. 

As Trap Jazz unpacks the roles these men have played in their sons’ lives, it also reveals the tender side of Moten, who learned piano on the bench beside his dad as a kid, but also grappled with feelings of abandonment and isolation when his father was incarcerated. It’s heartening to hear the cassette recordings Moten and Jay would listen to as teens, with Chris’s dad performing on the piano in prison and including pointers for the boys about chords, keys, and the like. And while he admits that he buried those emotions for a long time, Moten is also seen playing alongside his dad during a joyous impromptu jam session, him on a modern keyboard and dad making his own Hammond organ sing.      

Our Call: STREAM IT. Trap Jazz reveals the creative process of musicians Chris Moten, Cassius Jay, and Devon “Stixx” Taylor as they construct a sound full of both historic weight and contemporary flair. But it also explores the nature of legacy, in both a personal sense and as a professional signature.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges