Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws (born 27 January 1968), better known by his stage name Tricky, is an English musician, record producer, vocalist and rapper. He was born and raised in Bristol, in southwest England. Through his work with Massive Attack and other artists, Tricky became a major figure in the Bristol underground scene, which gave rise to multiple internationally recognized artists and the music genre of trip hop.
Tricky embarked on a solo career with his debut album, Maxinquaye, in 1995. The release won Tricky popular acclaim and marked the beginning of a lengthy collaborative partnership with vocalist Martina Topley-Bird. He released four more studio albums before the end of the decade, including Pre-Millennium Tension and the pseudonymous Nearly God, both in 1996. He has gone on to release nine studio albums since 2000, most recently Different When It’s Silent (2026). In 2016, he joined Massive Attack on stage for the first time in two decades while continuing his solo career.
Tricky is a pioneer of trip hop music, and his work is noted for its dark, layered musical style that blends disparate cultural influences and genres, including hip-hop, alternative rock, and ragga. He has collaborated with a wide range of artists over the course of his career, including Terry Hall, Björk, Gravediggaz, Alanis Morissette, Grace Jones and PJ Harvey.
Early life Tricky was born Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws on 27 January 1968 in Knowle West, Bristol, to a Jamaican father and a Ghanaian-English mother. His mother, Maxine Quaye, died either by suicide or due to epilepsy complications when Tricky was four. His father, Roy Thaws, operated the Studio 17 sound system (formerly known as "Tarzan the High Priest") with his brother Rupert and his own father, Hector. Bristol musician Bunny Marrett claimed in 2012, "It became the most popular sound system in Bristol at the time."
Tricky experienced a difficult childhood in Knowle West, an economically deprived area in Southern Bristol. He became involved in crime at an early age, joining a gang that was involved in car theft, burglary, fights, and promiscuity. Tricky spent his youth in the care of his grandmother, who often let him watch old horror films instead of going to school. At 15, he began to write lyrics ("I like to rock, I like to dance, I like pretty girls taking down their pants", MixMag, 1996). When he was 17, he spent some time in prison after purchasing forged £50 notes from a friend, who later informed the police. Tricky stated in an interview afterward, "Prison was really good. I'm never going back."
Career 1987–1994: The Wild Bunch, Massive Attack In the mid-1980s, Tricky met DJ Milo and spent time with a sound system called the Wild Bunch, which, by 1987, evolved into Massive Attack. He received the nickname "Tricky Kid," and, at age 18, became a member of the Fresh 4, a rap group built from the Wild Bunch. He also rapped on Massive Attack's acclaimed debut album, Blue Lines (1991).
In 1991, before the release of Blue Lines, he met Martina Topley-Bird in Bristol. Some time later, she came to his house and mentioned to Tricky and Mark Stewart that she could sing. Martina was only 15 years old, but her "honey-coated vox" impressed them, and they recorded a song called "Aftermath" (although The Face '95 mentions that the first song they recorded together was called "Shoebox"). Tricky showed "Aftermath" to Massive Attack, but they were not interested. In 1993, he decided to press a few hundred vinyl copies of the song. In 1995, a white label record got him a contract with Island Records, and he started to record his first solo album, Maxinquaye.
1995–2001: Solo breakthrough
Tricky left Massive Attack to release his debut album, Maxinquaye, co-produced by himself and Mark Saunders and prominently featuring singer Martina Topley-Bird. The album was successful, and Tricky consequently attained international fame, something he was notably uncomfortable with. The Maxinquaye album review by Rolling Stone read: "Tricky devoured everything from American hip-hop and soul to reggae and the more melancholic strains of '80s British rock"."Album Reviews: Tricky – Maxinquaye", Rolling Stone, 2 February 1998.
Authors David Hesmondhalgh and Caspar Melville wrote in the book Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA: "Tricky showed his debt to hip-hop aesthetics by reconstructualising samples and slices of both the most respected black music (Public Enemy) and the tackiest pop (quoting David Cassidy's "How Can I Be Sure?")."David Hesmondhalgh and Caspar Melville, "Urban Breakbeat Culture: Repercussions of Hip-Hop in the United Kingdom," in Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001), 104–105. As the Rolling Stone article further explained, Tricky created "a mercurial style of dance music that immediately finds its own fast feet."
Tricky failed to complete a number of lyrics begun for the Massive Attack album Protection and gave the band some of the lyrics he had written for Maxinquaye instead, meaning there is significant overlap in the lyrics of songs on the two albums—specifically with "Overcome" on Maxinquaye and "Karmacoma" on Protection; and "Hell is 'Round the Corner" on Maxinquaye and "Eurochild" on Protection. Tricky found it difficult to cope with the huge success of Maxinquaye and subsequently eschewed the laidback soul sound of the first album to create an increasingly edgy and aggressive punk style of music.
In 1996, Neneh Cherry and Björk appeared as guests on his second album Nearly God. The opening number was a cover of the Siouxsie and the Banshees pre-trip-hop song "Tattoo"Boyd, Brian. "He Be The Prophet". The Irish Times. 24 May 1996. Retrieved 12 October 2015. that had previously inspired Tricky when he forged his style.Valli and Pascal Bertin. Portishead - Dummy in "Pop, Etc". Radio France Inter. Broadcast on 31 October 2010. Retrieved 16 May 2016. from the original on 17 July 2018Troussé, Stephen. Spellbound: Siouxsie Sioux's 20 Greatest Songs. Uncut.co.uk. June 2023. Retrieved 25 June 2025. from the original on 2 July 2025. By the time Pre-Millennium Tension was released in 1996, Tricky was increasingly irritated with the British press, particularly articles written in The Face magazine. The Face had been an early champion of Maxinquaye, but saw Tricky as more a duo than a solo project. The Face published an article claiming that vocalist Martina Topley-Bird had to single-handedly bring up the child that Tricky had fathered.
In 2001, Tricky appeared on the Thirteen Ghosts soundtrack with the song "Excess" which (briefly) features Alanis Morissette during two of the choruses. In 2002, that song also appeared on the Queen of the Damned soundtrack.
2002–2011: Mixed Race and other work
Tricky's studio album Knowle West Boy was released in the UK and Ireland in July 2008, and September 2008 in the US. The first single from the album was "Council Estate" and features the artist as the sole vocalist: "It's the first single I've ever done with just me on vocals. I couldn't whisper that song. I had to come out of myself and do a loud, screaming vocal. I wanted to be a proper frontman on that one." In an interview with The Skinny in July 2008, Tricky mentioned that Knowle West Boy was the first album for which he decided to enlist a co-producer. Ex-Suede guitarist Bernard Butler was Tricky's initial selection, but, less than enamoured with Butler's technical prowess, Tricky finished the album by totally re-recording all of the material.
On 8 December 2009, Tricky's 1995 debut album Maxinquaye was reissued with a bonus 13-track CD featuring B-sides, outtakes and seven previously unreleased mixes of songs such as "Overcome", "Hell is Round the Corner" and "Black Steel".
In December 2009, the media reported that Massive Attack met Tricky in Paris and asked him to work on a future project—Daddy G said: "Things seem like they've healed between us and Tricky. It's been quite well documented how us and Tricky get on, hasn't it? It's not that well, but things have changed. Things have softened up. We saw Tricky a couple of weeks ago in Paris and it was quite an amicable meeting after five or six years." Tricky agreed to record with the band and he revealed in a June 2013 interview that "there's a couple of songs which are OK, which are really good actually to be honest with you". However, Tricky also stated in June 2013 that he could not spend more than two or three days with Massive Attack and described band member Daddy G as "very arrogant".
Tricky's ninth album Mixed Race was released on 27 September 2010 and the first single from the album became available on 23 August. The album includes contributions from Franky Riley, Terry Lynn, Bobby Gillespie, Hamadouche, Blackman and Tricky's youngest brother Marlon Thaws.
In June 2011, Tricky's then label Brownpunk signed on Mexican band My Black Heart Machine for one single, "It Beats Like This", which Tricky co-produced. My Black Heart Machine was then commissioned by the label to cover a song from Maxinquaye for an album of covers by Brownpunk's roster; the band chose "Hell Is Round the Corner". "It Beats Like This" was released independently by the band on their first EP in April 2013.
Tricky produced rapper Omni's album IamOmni (produced by Tricky) (released under the moniker IamOmni) that was available from 30 August 2011 as a free download on Omni's official site.
2011–present: False Idols, live events, Ununiform On 26 June 2011, Tricky appeared on stage during American singer Beyoncé's historic 2011 Glastonbury Festival Performance on the pyramid stage for the track "Baby Boy". Partly the result of technical difficulties with his microphone, he later stated he was "mortified" by his own performance, saying, "I've never been so embarrassed. My body just froze".
In April 2012, Tricky performed Maxinquaye with Martina Topley-Bird at several concerts around the UK including, for the first time in several years in his home town of Bristol. The concerts featured regular interruptions orchestrated by Tricky, where he brought his youngest brother, Marlon Thaws to rap on stage alongside other local rappers as well as encouraging the audience to come up on stage. The review of the concert in Manchester said it was "shambolic" and a "car crash" with Tricky often leaving the stage and continuously forgetting his words, leaving Topley Bird to carry the delivery of the tracks, resulting in many leaving early after repeated issues with Tricky's behaviour and shouts of "wanker" from the crowd.
In February 2013, Tricky announced the release of a new album, False Idols. The album is the follow-up from his 2010 Mixed Race and featured Peter Silberman, Fifi Rong and Nneka. Tricky released this statement about the album: "This new album I'll stand behind every track. I don't care whether people like it. I'm doing what I want to do, which is what I did with my first record. That's what made me who I was in the beginning. If people don't like it, it don't matter to me because I'm back where I was."
In spring 2014, it was announced that Tricky is to perform at a number of festivals throughout Europe over the summer of 2014, including Control Day Out in Romania, festival Couleur Café in Belgium, Positivus Festival in Latvia and Galtres Parklands Festival in England, the latter of which he co-headlines with contemporaries Morcheeba.
Tricky announced a new album titled Adrian Thaws in June 2014. It was released on 8 September 2014. Skilled Mechanics was released in January 2016. The same month was released a song Tricky had written with 3D from Massive Attack, on the band's EP Ritual Spirit.