After five years, BruceLeeroy, the collaborative project between long-time local rappers and friends Dru B Shinin’ and SageModeWrex, is back this week, dropping their second release, a four-track EP. Produced by Northside-based production wizard Fostepco at his Crooked2th Studios, Tha Four Noble Truths is named for Buddhism’s four foundational pillars. Ahead of Truths’ release party on Fri at The Tub (2500 E 4th St, Fort Worth), the two rappers sat down for a bite with me on a Sunday evening at a local restaurant, where we talked about the road to Truths and how they’ve grown as both performers and people.
Here in 2025, the two rappers are arguably old-heads, having arrived on the local rap scene in the early 2010s, climbed the ladder, chased the dream, and found that making music for music’s sake is more important than making it for money, which is itself a recurring theme in a lot of their musical output from the past five years. Back in spring 2020, BruceLeeroy dropped their self-titled debut, a collection built on Street Fighter II-samples and sticky, skittering beats that offered detached, cynical observations about trying to get by in an America that had become increasingly fractured by growing political and cultural tribalization and decreasing avenues for paying your bills. Featuring production from long-time collaborator EyeJay and rapper Solar Slim and engineering from reggae producer Paul “Giggy” Gordon, BruceLeeroy showcased Dru and Wrex at the top of their game.
The album’s release party was booked for the middle of March 2020. You can probably guess what happened. Thanks to the COVID lockdown, BruceLeeroy arrived without the release party it deserved, though Wrex, who had a new EP called Earth Energy out around that time, did go through with his own scheduled release party earlier that month, offering attendees an option for what became a sign of the times.
“I was pulling up to his show,” remembered Dru, “and I walked in, and everybody had started masking. I was like, ‘What the hell?!’ I grabbed one just in case. I was like, ‘I might need this later.’ I wore that first mask for like three weeks.”
COVID halted whatever momentum BruceLeeroy might have had, but the two MCs didn’t stop making music — Dru, along with another rapper, A-Roy, put out the mixtape Truth Tape Side 2 in fall 2020, and Wrex worked on the material that would appear on his Professor Wrex album, released in 2022. Dru, who hit his fourth decade that year, put out an excellent, frankly personal album called This Iz 40, and when 2024 rolled around, both had new material: Wrex put out an album called Calm in the Storm, and Dru dropped another mixtape, Dru B Shinin’ Featuring…
Obviously, the two MCs have never let obstacles stand in the way of creative expression, nor are either of them shy about going deep into the waters of self-reflection. On their own, both Dru and Wrex have always used their music to figure out what makes themselves tick, rapping unabashedly about their inner turmoils and their personal struggles with the game, the law, and a world that’s pretty rough on everyone’s mental health. And in Four Noble Truth’s quartet of tracks — “Suffering,” “Temptation,” “Imperfection,” and “Mindful” — they reflect on the darkness of their pasts and how it has informed the positivity of the present.
“Each song’s kind of a step in the Noble Truth,” Dru said.
“Suffering” details his life from over a decade ago, when he stacked a lot of cash from moving large quantities of weed. To my ears, “Obviously / Pro and cons constantly” is a standout line describing this life as well as “just to get ahead, better do some bad.” The money rolled in like floodwaters through a front door, then he got busted, and it all crashed down. That humbling experience forced him to examine his life, and what he found, essentially, is the power in gratitude for the present, rather than the stress and malaise brought upon by endlessly chasing money.
“Each song progresses the story a little more,” Dru said, “until getting to the last song, in which we’re closer to [being] enlightened or at least more awakened. We’re not there, obviously, but we’re moving in that direction.”
As for Wrex, his path from suffering to mindfulness began when he was in his early 20s, around the time of the birth of his first daughter, now 11. Prior to becoming a father, he’d been wilding out, taking various drugs, fighting at his shows.
“I was tripping that whole time,” Wrex recalled. “I was crazy. That really started all of this spiritual mode-type of that time for me because I was, like, emotionally fucked up all the time.”
Back then, he got into fights a lot. But in the passage of time and a disciplined practice of meditation, he’s learned to resolve those reactive, heated emotions as well as find answers to the internal and external questions that might otherwise make him anxious. “I usually sit with things on my own, and I always say the answer. I have it somewhere in my lineage of knowledge, maybe not in this lifetime but some past one or other that has records [of answers] out there that exist in the world. So, I usually meditate if I’m really frustrated, and I’ll fall into one of them. Anywhere, anytime … I’m just going to be quiet with my eyes closed for a second, and I’ve done it in weird places.”
A student of martial arts — he owns a contact-sports training gym in Crowley called Body, Mind, and Spirit Fitness — and Eastern philosophy, Wrex writes songs that often explore the contours of his own mind and the paths toward inner peace, though, as Dru put it, “he can always say stuff like on this new album, where he’s like … ‘I’m thinking about some breasts.’ ”
In other words, Tha Four Noble Truths is about the experience of being human, which includes forgiving yourself for your fuckups as well as allowing yourself the grace to veer off the path toward enlightenment as long as you’re still trying to get there. Midway through “Mindful,” Wrex raps this line: “Too live, blessing Instagram with inspirational verses / And oaths, just wanna give a nudge / Before life pulls the rug.”
It’s an earnest, honest sentiment — for humans, by humans — who are optimistic that everyone can strive for a noble, awakened life.
