Trik Turner

Trik Turner came out of Phoenix, Arizona, in 1999, a rap rock outfit that made its name with a heartstring-tugger instead of a mosh-pit anthem. Their self-titled album, released on RCA in 2002, carried "Friends and Family", a warm, slow-rolling blend of rapped verses, acoustic strum and a big, sing-along chorus that played as well on adult contemporary formats as it did on rock stations.

The song had a gimmick nobody had tried before: two different videos aired on MTV, one mentioning daughters and the other sons. It got them onto the late-night talk show circuit, onto the Mr. Deeds soundtrack and later into an episode of Scrubs, while another song, "Black Sheep", turned up in the film You Got Served.

Then the wheels came off. Before they could get back into the studio, disagreements inside the band pushed some members out, and RCA dropped them. The survivors kept touring and in 2005 released Naming the Unidentified through their own website, a set of alternative rock songs that left the nu metal crunch behind. The lineup has kept shifting ever since.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.