“There’s nothing I can’t do with this instrument.”

Banjo virtuoso Tray Wellington demonstrated that belief in limitlessness from the moment he first stepped into the contemporary bluegrass spotlight a little more than half a decade ago.

For a young musician to earn the respect of predecessors and peers in that world is no small thing. Wellington displayed such mastery of three-finger banjo technique that the International Bluegrass Music Association recognized his promise when he was barely out of his teens. And he conceived of such invigorating possibilities for string band music, infusing it with the rhythmic and melodic elasticity of jazz, that he won the Steve Martin Banjo Prize in 2024.

From Wellington’s debut album “Black Banjo” on, the expansiveness of his musicianship has also conveyed important truths about genre: that string band music and jazz alike are, and have always been, Black musical traditions and sites of innovation.

Here and there, he’s also hinted at his affinity for hip-hop, but he’s finally gone all in on his new album “Heart on the Table.” It may not be the world’s first attempt to combine rapping and banjo, but his fluency in both traditions makes it a groundbreaking and standard-setting project — one that could only come from the imagination of an artist who’s studied the hip-hop canon and dedicated himself just as seriously to absorbing its mechanics as he has bluegrass and plenty else.

Here’s how Wellington’s lifelong relationship with both hip-hop and folk music developed, in his own words:

“I feel like with every album I’ve done, I’ve pushed the boundaries of what can be done in that genre.

I’ve done the instrumental thing, you know, and I’m a very goal-based person. So when I was looking at [what to do with] this album, I was like, ‘What haven’t I done?’ And I haven’t been able to show people that I know how to tell a story. I know how to articulate these things into words.

And there hasn’t been a good blend of looking at hip-hop as folk music.

I don’t think people should be surprised that I’d do this album, ’cause I did ‘Pursuit of Happiness’ by Kid Cudi.

I grew up in rural North Carolina. There was disdain for hip-hop music among the people around. A lot of people were like, ‘Oh, it’s not good music. It’s not good for you.’

My mom was listening to classic hip-hop like Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Biggie, people like that. So I was hearing a bunch of that from a really, really young age.

But then at the same time, another huge influence in my life was my grandpa, and he was listening to classic country. He was listening to classic rock, bluegrass. So I was hearing these two different musical worlds that both ended up being very influential for me.

There was a class at my middle school called the Mountain Music Club, which was a club where you could learn how to play traditional folk music. I got to start learning how to play acoustic guitar… Then I heard banjo for the first time there, and I was, like, ‘Whoa, that’s super cool.’ When I was first getting into bluegrass and folk, a lot of other music kind of went to the wayside, ’cause I was so entrenched in trying to learn this instrument.

And when I got to college [at East Tennessee State], I started getting into jazz music a lot. I discovered John Coltrane, Roy Hargrove. As I started listening, I started seeing the intersections of the music.

As I started to go to more parties in college, I started also getting my love of hip-hop back. I wanted to be able to spit a fire freestyle at these parties with my friends.

One of the first [rappers] I got into [studying] heavily was J. Cole. I went through his 2014 album Forrest Hills Drive. I wrote down all these lines, and I was like, ‘Okay, how are these different bars being formulated and how’s he building the song?’

And then I went back and looked at MF Doom’s album ‘Madvillainy, ‘and then I went to ‘Illmatic’ from Nas.

I started having these little epiphanies of how bars work and similes and metaphors and how imagery can work within hip-hop.

Then I was studying all these different producers in hip-hop… I started making these beats, and they were really bad at first. I’m not even gonna lie.

I remember having a personal discussion with myself in my head where I was, like, ‘Well, wait a second. You’re always saying, “Don’t let boundaries keep you from doing something.” So, don’t let a boundary keep you from doing something that you think would actually be cool.’ And I found a way to integrate banjo into these hip-hop instrumentals of the time.

[The song] ‘False Idols’ originally had a trap hi-hat on it.

I had this album, I thought, done a long time ago. [But] it ended up being the demos for the album.

Something was missing for me. I was doing all the hooks, and I was doing everything by myself.

And I’m like, ‘Damn. I’m missing my community being on this.’

At the time, I was listening to John Mailander’s ‘Forecast’ album, and I was like, ‘This is like the sound I hear in my head for this stuff.’ And so, I contacted John: ‘If I re-recorded this with other people, would you be willing to produce it?’

I didn’t know how it was gonna sound with the full band, because literally the first time we’d all played together was when we were recording the album. There was no rehearsals before it, but it came out amazing.

With this album, I wanted to change people’s ideas of what banjo could do. So often, I think people look at banjo like it’s supposed to be this driving thing. It’s supposed to be twangy.

In bluegrass or folk music, the banjo [has] such a rhythmic role. But in hip-hop, I have drums, bass, that is covering the rhythm. So I can be more of a pad for the band and I can just add textures to it [with banjo].

I have to know the art form. I’ve heard people when they don’t know hip-hop and they just try to mimic it, and it’s really corny. I didn’t want it to come off corny at all, and I didn’t wanna come off like I don’t know what I’m doing.

I’m not going to sit here and say I am the best rapper. I don’t really believe I am. But through studying, I know I’m being the most authentically me I can be, and that’s the best thing I can do.

I think that I have enough faith in all these different musical genres for [hip-hop and folk devotees] all to listen to this album and think, ‘This is adding something to our culture that we didn’t have before.’

I want it to be an artistic statement.”

Wellington’s album release show is tonight — Thursday, July 9 — at Eastside Bowl.

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