Audio: Noah Issa + Mr. Lexx Invent “Traphall” on “Damp”

Words by Jesse Serwer—

Our friends over at clothing label/blog We Are Massiv just put Noah Issa, a 21-year-old beatmaker who we’re told was Jamaica’s first dubstep producer, on our radar. But Noah (who’s also produced for Pitbull and Machel Montano) already has a new sound, one he’s dubbed traphall. Yep, it’s a mixture of dancehall and the sweeping sub-bass, skittering snares and swift hi-hats consistent with trap music—once the domain of Southern hip-hop producers making beats for drugdeal-minded rappers like Gucci Mane, and now the favorite sound of bedroom beatmakers everywhere. Noah’s clearly a dubstep dude, though, and the traphall found on his new single “Damp” has features of that genre as well, notably its distorted bass buildups.

Always a leader when it comes to embracing new sounds, Mr. Lexx (he was on Major Lazer’s first single, “Hold the Line” back in ’09) is the first deejay to show up to the party, lending his trademark guttural baritone to”Damp,” a nearly 6-minute opus that’s one of the better fusions of dancehall and dubstep we’ve heard. Test it out on the Soundcloud below and if you like what you hear, hit the “Pay with a Tweet or Facebook” button to download—your “payment” will be in the form of a tweet or Facebook post, not actual money.