Ishara Agos­ti­ni

You may have heard their hit sin­gle, Nah Boy, on the ra­dio, or seen the high en­er­gy video cir­cu­lat­ing on­line. For Mark Hardy and Yung Rudd, this is just the be­gin­ning.

Isaac "Yung Rudd" Rud­der and Mar­cus "Mark Hardy" Brave­boy–part of Xplic­it En­ter­tain­ment, a col­lab­o­ra­tive group of mu­sic pro­duc­ers, song­writ­ers and per­form­ers–met in stu­dio in 2011 and have been work­ing to­geth­er ever since.

"Mar­cus's en­er­gy, you see Mar­cus right now, he's hap­py and invit­ing, so it was re­al­ly easy to work with be­cause I'm like that too, I like com­fort," Rud­der said dur­ing the in­ter­view on May 20. He added, "From then on we just re­alised we have a re­al­ly good cre­ative en­er­gy."

The re­spect they have for each oth­er is ob­vi­ous, and it's easy to see where the en­er­gy in the vi­ral videos for their sin­gles Pumpin' and Nah Boy come from. While the artists have very dif­fer­ent styles–Brave­boy's is more of a chant, heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by dance­hall; Rud­der's fol­lows tra­di­tion­al rap tech­niques–the two have found a way to bal­ance and com­ple­ment each oth­er.

"When Brave­boy might be writ­ing one verse I might give him some rap ad­vice and when I might be do­ing some­thing he might tell me, 'nah you should flow it like this. It sounds bet­ter,'" said Rud­der. "So it's per­fect. I think our styles help us grow and learn new things."

He added, "I think the fact that I was al­so a met­al fan made me like re­al­ly in­tri­cate lyrics. So when it comes to the song­writ­ing part I like to go a long way with it and al­so I like smooth, chill melodies."

Both Brave­boy and Rud­der come from mu­si­cal fam­i­lies, but they got their start in rap at dif­fer­ent stages. Brave­boy, now 29, got in­to the genre at 15 when he met Ken Hold­er, the then pro­duc­er for the now de­funct so­ca group 3Suns. His fa­ther, tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Hilton Brave­boy has al­ways sup­port­ed his mu­si­cal en­deav­ours.

Rud­der on the oth­er hand ad­mits that as a child he didn't even like rap. In his teens he used song­writ­ing as a way to process feel­ings and didn't even con­sid­er rap­ping un­til his ear­ly 20s.

Even though he's a son of ca­lyp­so leg­end David Rud­der, he has still man­aged to carve a space for him­self on his own.

Rud­der, 25, prefers to play down his her­itage, but Brave­boy thinks it's worth shar­ing.

"I men­tion it be­cause it's a sto­ry peo­ple like to hear," he said. "You know like how Damien Mar­ley is the son of Bob Mar­ley? I think peo­ple like lega­cies pass­ing on."

Brave­boy and Rud­der's next project is a stu­dio al­bum en­ti­tled Trinidad and To­ba­go Trap mu­sic or TTT.

The al­bum will in­clude their two ra­dio sin­gles Pumpin' and Nah Boy and a genre they de­scribe as trap­so–At­lanta trap mu­sic with lo­cal kaiso and so­ca flavours.

From the ti­tle go down, Brave­boy and Rud­der have filled their col­lab­o­ra­tive al­bum with lo­cal pop cul­ture ref­er­ences.

"I think peo­ple in the gen­er­a­tion that com­ing up they don't know about TTT, Mas­tana Ba­har, things like that. So we kind of us­ing those Tan Tan and Sagaboy, stuff like that we grew up on we try­ing to ed­u­cate young peo­ple on it but in a cool way," said Brave­boy.

For them the al­bum is a way to re­main con­nect­ed.

"We want every­body in Trinidad to feel in­clud­ed in­to this new wave of mak­ing Trinidad cool," Rud­der said. "We want them to feel in­clud­ed in it. It's not just for the younger gen­er­a­tion; it's for the old­er heads as well."

This theme of in­clu­siv­i­ty runs through the range of artists Brave­boy and Rud­der plan on work­ing with for the up­com­ing al­bum. Brave­boy has al­ready col­lab­o­rat­ed with the rock band 5 Miles to Mid­night. Big names like Kevon Carter of Im­ij and Com­pa­ny and Neb­u­la868, as well as up­com­ing artists like Inzey and 3Kings will join the duo on TTT.

"It's just friends," Brave­boy said. "Es­pe­cial­ly from the younger gen­er­a­tion of artistes, we want to bring every­body to­geth­er. Show uni­ty. I sup­port you, you sup­port me. We do projects to­geth­er, you in my video, I'm in your video."

The duo is be­ing re­ceived well. Their in­di­vid­ual Face­book fan­pages have healthy au­di­ences and the videos have sev­er­al thou­sand views each. The songs are get­ting air­time on the all ma­jor ur­ban ra­dio sta­tions and they have per­for­mance gigs lined up for June, Ju­ly and Au­gust.

"Be­fore we would still have to reach out to peo­ple and say, 'ay you know we sing and we do this', but now peo­ple are reach­ing out to us," said Brave­boy. "It's a nice feel­ing to know that you mak­ing progress and be­ing re­ward­ed for your hard work."

The al­bum, Trinidad and To­ba­go Trap Mu­sic is ex­pect­ed to drop some time around Sep­tem­ber 2014, and fans can ex­pect a new sin­gle in ear­ly June.

You can find out more about them at bit.ly/yun­grudd or by vis­it­ing their Face­book pages at face­book.com/markhardy­mu­sic and face­book.com/xplici­ten­ter­tain­ment.