trojan horse serves as the final installment in Matt Proxy’s Horse Trilogy, following the EPs horse play and beating a dead horse. Proxy has said he chose the title because he “came in the game on some other sh*t. Entendre intended.” The album pulls listeners in with the surreal, distorted experimentation Proxy has built his name on, but the further it goes, the more it reveals itself as something bigger, more ambitious, and more personal than anything he has made before.
For a debut album, trojan horse arrives with an unexpectedly stacked and wide-ranging feature list, bringing together Grimes, Current Joys, never goodbye, and fakemink, who joins Proxy on the opening track, “5.” The song works like a Trojan horse in its own right, easing listeners in with one of the project’s most accessible instrumentals before the album starts pulling apart in every direction. From there, it keeps expanding, moving through constant shifts in genre, soundscape, and vocal delivery.
Proxy’s talent as a producer is on full display, especially in the way he moves between digicore, abstract hip-hop, indie rock, soul, trap, and even straight noise without letting the album collapse under its own range. The project carries traces of Earl Sweatshirt’s emotional weight and the blown-out production style of Proxy’s previous collaborator JPEGMAFIA.
Beneath its chaos, there’s a melancholic underbelly to the entire project: “ATLANTA” deals with Proxy’s turbulent relationship with his father, and “BLUE” serves as an emotional tribute to his late older sister. “God,” the only song title not stylized in all caps, is about Proxy chasing success to escape his past, only to realize that fame, money, and achievement still leave him feeling lost, overwhelmed, and searching for something real enough to hold onto, whether in love, faith, or another person.
trojan horse is the clearest expression of Proxy’s inner world so far. The volatile production, sudden genre shifts, and raw personal details come together to make a messy, vivid, and deeply human album. As the final installment in the Horse Trilogy, trojan horse marks a clear step forward for Proxy, not just as an artist and producer, but as a creative force with a world entirely his own.
By Adair Mahan