Fat Trel grows up

The D.C. rapper reflects upon his childhood and trying to stay out of trouble in the wake of a violent incident at last year’s DMV awards. Trel’s newest mixtape drops March 26.

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“I do what the [expletive] I do,” rapper Fat Trel says. “And I rap about it.” Trel is pictured in the neighborhood in Northeast where he grew up.

Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post

As Trel prepares to drop his new mixtape, “Nightmare on E St.,” he hopes that he’ll be picked up by a major label.

Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post

Martel "Fat Trel" Reeves at age 7. Trel was born in Danville, Va., and his mother moved the family to D.C. when he was 4.

Courtesy of Pamela Reeves / Courtesy of Pamela Reeves

Martel "Fat Trel" Reeves at age 7. In the third grade, Trel wrote and performed a rap for the Minor Elementary School talent show called “My Ghetto Neighborhood.”

Courtesy of Pamela Reeves / Courtesy of Pamela Reeves

Trel, second from right, in the fourth grade. “My son is a really, hard-core gangster rapper and his lyrics are what he’s lived and what he’s been through,”says his mother, Pamela Reeves.

Courtesy of Pamela Reeves / Courtesy of Pamela Reeves

Trel at age 16. He was expelled from Largo High School for bad behavior during his freshman year, after which he enrolled in Job Corps. He hustled drugs and was arrested three times — but at 17, he began trying to replace the street life with the rap life.

Courtesy of Pamela Reeves / Courtesy of Pamela Reeves

”Nobody done got a better swag than a Washington D.C. person,” Trel says. “Best swag, best dressed, best slang, the way we shake the dice. Everything… The whole world needs to know the real story of a 100-percent Washingtonian.”

Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post

Writes Chris Richards: “[Trel] wears a bramble of dreadlocks on his head and an arsenal of tattoos on his body. His image is as arresting as his rhymes -- menacing tough talk and lewd sexual boasts delivered in heavy, sticky syllables. At his most thrilling, he manages to sound dangerous in a genre that has exhausted the notion of taboo.”

Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post

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