BOSS SQUAD

Boss Squad—How Bosses Roll

Lil Trae, Chris Cross & Young Pooh

Typically, the first words out of a teenager’s mouth when confronted by authority are: “You’re not the boss of me!”

However, if the focus is on becoming the boss, those words are never uttered.

The Boss Squad, out of Dallas, Texas, the emerging rap sensation on Silverback Records is comprised of three young adults who are taking the reins of their own lives to be in control. And that control is exhibited by Chris Cross, Young Pooh and Lil Trae, who all met in high school, meshing and merging goals since they had so much in common.

It was Lil Trae, the youngest of the Squad, who actually took the lead and brought the other members together to form Boss Squad. He recognized the talent that they each possessed and knew that coming together as a unit would only make everything better for everyone.

“We were going through the same life struggles,” said Lil Trae. “Having no mamma, no daddy and trying to eat with money problems. But we all had the same survival style, with the same mindset on how to hustle and how to get it

Trae, who has been rapping for five years, acknowledges that being a boss comes with some heavy responsibilities, including taking the weight for decisions made.  But being a boss also means that each person in the group has to do the right thing for the overall good of the group.

“If you are the boss, you can do what you want to do and know what you can do,” said Trae. “We never put things out there to do wrong. If we can’t get it one way, we’ll get it another way, but we won’t get it in a bad way. We won’t make any bad decisions.”

According to Chris Cross, who sings and raps for Boss Squad, the bad decisions have to be avoided in order to “show my family that I can do what I’ve been saying I can do. Now that I’m a young adult, I have to get my own money and I can’t do it in the same ways I used to. Growing up changes the game because I can’t get away with things I got away with as a juvenile.”

For his contribution to Boss Squad, Chris Cross went back to things that he learned as a juvenile, like singing and rapping.

“I’ve been singing for about fifteen years,” Said Chris. “I was in church getting my vocals together, practicing all the time. When I hear a beat, whatever comes to me at the moment is what I do–singing or rapping–and sometimes I do both.”

Singing and rapping makes Chris different, but each of them brings something divergent. Mostly, they bring their life experiences to color the musical tapestry woven by three young men at the precipice of life.

The oldest of the Squad, Young Pooh has the most life experience in the group. And he has used his trials and tribulations to drive him forward, instead of allowing them to knock him down for the count.

“What knocked me down was having my kidney transplanted,” Pooh revealed. “But it’s been five years and even though I gave up the pen, I picked it back up and now I can’t be stopped.  I kept telling myself to push forward.”

Pushing forward relentlessly as a team of bosses is what caught the attention of Dee Chavo, from Silverback Records.

“We were on our own when we sent Dee a tape,” recalled Pooh. “When we met with him, he liked that we were all about teamwork, so he basically became a part of our team. Four brains are better than one.”

These three young bosses are different, but in many ways, the same. And any comparisons are to themselves, not to rappers before them.

“You can’t compare our music because we have our own style and our own voices,” said Lil Trae. “We’re versatile. Everything we talk about is what we do in real life.”

In real life, the young bosses deal with girls and they rhyme about those experiences on tracks like their lead single “In Love With the Squad.”

According to Trae, the song is about “a girl so in love with the Boss Squad music and the Boss Squad style, that she wants to be with us in whatever we do.”

“In Love With the Squad” is ready to hit the streets and prepare the scene for this crew of young bosses. The track also has its own unofficial video on YouTube

Janet Jackson had a breakthrough in her music career when she tore away from family and business management so that she could be in control of her own destiny. Boss Squad is entering the music game with that already on deck.

“Right now, we’re dropping singles and we’re talking about girls and what we do and how we live,” said Chris Cross. “We’re making music that people can feel—from babies to grown folks—we’re trying to hit everybody.”

Growing and maintaining control over their lives, as opposed to leaving those lives wasted on the streets.

That’s how bosses roll.