EVENT | IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE (@IMMORTALTECH) LIVE @O2Islington SUPPORT BY @CHINOXL @POISONPENBK @DJSNUFFONE

iteImmor­tal Tech­nique returns to the UK for a long awaited gig, and you do not want to miss it! 

Where: O2 Academy Isling­ton

Date: Tues­day 21st August (7PM)

Sup­port by: Chino XL, Pois­on Pen, DJ Snuff, DJ Stat­ic

To book your tick­ets click here

 

Born in a mil­it­ary hos­pit­al in South Amer­ica, Immor­tal Tech­nique was brought to the United States in the early 80’s while a civil war was break­ing out in his nat­ive Peru. The US sup­por­ted pup­pet demo­cracy and Guer­illa fac­tions were locked in a bit­ter struggle which ended like most do in Lat­in Amer­ica, with the mil­it­ary and eco­nom­ic aid of the State Dept. through chan­nels like the CIA. Although he had escaped the bel­li­ger­ent poverty and social tur­moil of life in the 3rd world, he was now resid­ing in Har­lem which had its own share of drama. Grow­ing up on the streets of New York, the young man became enam­ored with Hip Hop cul­ture, writ­ing graf­fiti and start­ing to rhyme at an early age. Although he fre­quently cut school and ended up being arres­ted time and time again for his wild beha­vi­or, the kid still man­aged to fin­ish high school and got accep­ted to a state uni­ver­sity.

Unfor­tu­nately the sur­viv­al­ist and aggress­ive atti­tude that was the norm in New York City caused him to be involved in more viol­ent alter­ca­tions at school, wheth­er it was with oth­er broth­ers, false flag­gers or the relent­lessly racist pop­u­la­tion of an uncul­tured Middle Amer­ica. Com­pil­ing mul­tiple assault charges in New York State and in oth­er states even­tu­ally caught up to the uncom­prom­isingly hard­headed actions of one Immor­tal Tech­nique. He faced sev­er­al charges for Aggrav­ated Assault in the tri-state area. Real­iz­ing his inev­it­able incar­cer­a­tion, Tech­nique began to pro­lific­ally write down his ideas about what he had lived and seen in the struggle back at home in rela­tion to his vis­its back to his nat­ive land. He came to embrace his Afric­an roots that stemmed from his grand­fath­er and under­stood the nature of racism and ignor­ance in its role in Latino cul­ture, sep­ar­at­ing oppressed peoples and keep­ing them divided. He also began to study in depth about the Revolu­tion­ary ideas that had caused a his­tory of upris­ing in the indi­gen­ous com­munity of his Nat­ive South Amer­ica. Although pres­sured to turn states evid­ence before and dur­ing his bid, he refused the DA and law­yers. He was facing a 5–10 stretch, but the hir­ing of a pittbull attor­ney helped him com­pile the cases without turn­ing snitch like his co-defend­ants. The res­ult was a 1–2 year sen­tence in the moun­tains, 6 hours away from the city. There Tech­nique stud­ied, worked out vig­or­ously, began to doc­u­ment his lyr­ics, and cre­ate songs. Besides the cre­ation there was destruc­tion, and the fights were noth­ing com­pared to the verbal battles that he engaged in occa­sion­ally. This proved to be a fore­shad­ow­ing of what was to come…

Paroled in 1999, Immor­tal Tech­nique returned to NYC and began a cam­paign to claim vic­tory to what he had dis­covered he had a tal­ent for; bat­tling. One of the rites of pas­sage in estab­lish­ing one­self in the Hip Hop com­munity is fol­low­ing in the steps of those who made their name in lyr­ic­al war­fare before you. Immor­tal Tech­nique quickly became known through­out the under­ground. His bru­tally dis­respect­ful style was trade­mark, and it was not long until he had won count­less battles not just on stage and in clubs, but on the streets whenev­er a ran­dom cipher would pop up. From Rock­steady Anniversary, to Brag­gin Rites, SLAM DVD’s and hookt.com’s infam­ous battles, he estab­lished him­self as someone who could cap­tiv­ate a crowd and who people looked for­ward to see­ing. But it was then that Tech­nique real­ized what every battle cham­pi­on had come to terms with before him, battles was just that, bat­tling, and not syn­onym­ous with suc­cess at mak­ing music.

Turn­ing his eye to pro­duc­tion and touch­ing up some of the songs he had writ­ten in pris­on he now focused on try­ing to get an album togeth­er, but major labels wanted a more pop friendly image and were uncom­fort­able with his hard­core street style that was com­ple­men­ted by his polit­ic­al views. In response to their lack of vis­ion, Immor­tal Tech­nique left the battle cir­cuit and released his crit­ic­ally acclaimed Revolu­tion­ary Vol.1, which at first moved 3000 cop­ies, but to date has moved more than 12,000. This earned him Unsigned Hype in the Source (11/02) and numer­ous art­icles in Ele­ment­al & Mass Appeal. Estab­lished in the under­ground cir­cuit Tech began anoth­er round of deal­ing with record labels unwill­ing to see the dir­ec­tion of his bru­tally hon­est and cul­tured rhymes. He decided to con­tin­ue with what had been so  suc­cess­ful, his hand to hand out the trunk hustle.

In the post 9.11 cli­mate, as the music industry crumbled, Immor­tal Tech­nique built on the truth with a hard­core brand of street polit­ics. Being fea­tured in XXL, The Wash­ing­ton Post, and hav­ing been titled with the Hip Hop quot­able in The Source (10/03) for his sopho­more inde­pend­ent release Revolu­tion­ary Vol.2 was just the begin­ning.. On Viper Records, where he is the Exec­ut­ive VP, he sold 29,000 cop­ies of Revolu­tion­ary Vol.2 to date and has appeared on soundtracks for new movies includ­ing the new Mario Van Peebles film “BAA­DASSSSS”. Immor­tal Tech­nique has also worked with Mumia Abu Jamal and AWOL magazine. His single “Indus­tri­al Revolu­tion” released in con­junc­tion with Uncle How­ie Records hit #1 on CMJ and #50 on the Bill­board charts.

The fol­low­ing two tabs change con­tent below.
Rishma Dhaliwal

Rishma Dhaliwal

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds
Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voice­less. Cur­rently work­ing in TV, Rishma brings her PR and media know­ledge to I am Hip Hop and oth­er pro­jects by No Bounds.

About Rishma Dhaliwal

Rishma Dhaliwal
Rishma Dhaliwal has extensive experience studying and working in the music and media industry. Having written a thesis on how Hip Hop acts as a social movement, she has spent years researching and connecting with artists who use the art form as a tool for bringing a voice to the voiceless. Currently working in TV, Rishma brings her PR and media knowledge to I am Hip Hop and other projects by No Bounds.