The pre-pre-release listening party for the lounge demo tracks of the Yukonn MC, a/k/a the Grizzly (“I never shave and I’m grimy”), is so exclusive, so “top secret,” that only two people are invited: the Yukonn and me. We’re cruising around Allston in his Jeep Cherokee while the goateed redhead queues up his portable CD player, and he’s about to premiere three songs he touts as “Frank Sinatra meets Prince on heroin.” One he calls a “smash hit.” Another is a “rough draft” slow jam about splitting up (he’s in the midst of a big breakup) that he hasn’t played for anybody yet. The last is a lyrical collaboration with R&B funk-joke emcee Godforbid of That Handsome Devil.
“You ready?” asks the Yukonn. I am. First up is the purported smash. “This song is called ‘Two Tickets.’ And then in parentheses” — he pauses for dramatic effect — “ ‘To My Bedroom.’ ” Before putting it on he warns, “I’ll probably sing along because I’m an asshole. And I’ll probably play it twice because I’m a conceited prick.” Then he presses play.
What follows is the Yukonn warbling seductively like a white-boy Louis Armstrong against a toe-tapping, horn-flirting, big-band sample produced by pal DJ Tommee. In what he calls the “happy-go-lucky, skipping, snapping, walking-down-the-street-and-twirling-the-girl-around”–style ditty, the Yukonn invites an unnamed female over for “crackers and cheese,” then ups the ante and asks if she’d like to pretend “we’re old and hit the hay at 10 pm.” He continues the schmoozy seduction, offering her two comp tix to “my bedrooooooooom,” where they can partake in some Nancy Sinatra–inspired boot-walking kink and bona fide ass slapping “under a cherry moon.” And yes, he sings along and plays “Two Tickets (To My Bedroom)” twice.
The Yukonn MC is the smooth-talking, corny-cute, ladies-obsessed lounge ID of Glenn Troy — a “Tom Jones 2006” pseudo-comic persona cultivated when the 30-year-old Cambridge/Reading/Waltham native (“I’m one of those kids who moved a lot”) hosted hip-hop shows at the Fenway Howard Johnson Hotel. In addition to crooning lounge tunes and winking at ladies in the audience, Troy also writes hip-hop rhymes with the four-piece rap crew My Mans N’ Them (MMNT) and occasionally collaborates in a noise-rock trio called the Inquisition. The interior of Troy’s vehicle reflects these disparate musical tastes: his lounge persona’s corduroy-and-plaid costume is flung across the back seat, fliers for an April 21 MMNT show with gangsta-rap daddy Just-Ice are on the floor, and a Slayer-embossed duffel bag is wedged above the arm rest. So how does a demolition-and-asbestos-removal professional by day end up being a lounge swinger, hip-hop lyricist, and noise-rock dude by night?
“I’m schizophrenic?” he offered earlier that evening at the Reel Bar, in Allston. Having spent the day working on a roof in Salisbury, he’d changed into a clean T-shirt, slip-on checkerboard Vans, and a flat-brimmed baseball hat over a doo rag. In front of him stood two Miller Lites, cheap chasers to a shot of Jaeger. “My mom says I’m a big ham, full of blarney.”
