Get to know LMNZ (@LMNZ)

Q. First off thank you for this inter­view. If pos­sible could you give us your thoughts on our magazine “I Am Hip-Hop”?

It’s a pleas­ure good sir. I am also thank­ful for this oppor­tun­ity to get in touch with like­minded people around the world and espe­cially Lon­don / UK. I say like­minded because I am feel­ing what this mag and No Bounds is about. I also try spread­ing pos­it­ive vibes and mes­sages with my music even while shin­ing spot­lights on dif­fi­cult top­ics and situ­ations. I want to bigup your drive and motiv­a­tion to pro­mote good­ness and to give altern­at­ives to the main­stream media.
There are easi­er paths to choose but I think ours is neces­sary and import­ant.

Q. How power­ful as a tool do you believe hip hop is with­in the con­text of edu­cat­ing the masses?

It edu­cated me and still is doing that every day. I am a very small part of “the masses” so I guess it really is a power­ful tool. The prob­lem is more that “HipHop” as most people exper­i­ence it is manip­u­lated cor­por­ate pop music in a fake dress. Does it have any­thing to do with HipHop cul­ture? Home­boy Sand­man might say “not really” To edu­cate the masses you must reach the masses. Just com­pare clicks on you­tube of a real ill HipHop piece with a strong pos­it­ive mes­sage and a blingbling joint which is pushed by big com­pan­ies. Of course the lat­ter has a big­ger effect on soci­ety.

On the oth­er hand I recently have seen in Seneg­al that HipHop there really has a big effect on the pub­lic and politi­cians fear the truth rap­pers are spread­ing. I think it depends on how bad the situ­ation is in a coun­try. If people are really suf­fer­ing they are more open to be edu­cated through HipHop. In Ger­many I think at the moment our liv­ing stand­ard is still too high. People do not want to hear about prob­lems all the time and rather have mostly mean­ing­less club music to party to. People here want to for­get. Peace espe­cially to all excep­tions.

Q. Your latest album is entitled World­wide Rap. Could you explain about the concept of this album?

I made this album to make a sign. I gathered 76 artists from all across the globe who rap and sing togeth­er in 29 lan­guages on my beats. So much hatred is planted every day that I wanted to just show proof that no mat­ter where you are from or what col­or your skin is we can cre­ate some­thing pos­it­ive togeth­er. Still a lot of people do not under­stand this. Hope­fully they come across this pro­ject and start to ques­tion their atti­tude. I got to know so many lovely people from all over world and every day there are new ones com­ing into my life. I can only recom­mend plant­ing pos­it­ive seeds to reap pos­it­ive things in the future since it made my life way more enjoy­able. So once again props to I Am Hip-Hop mag!

P.S.: I still got a couple 2xLPs and CDs left Holler!

Q. Work­ing with 76 dif­fer­ent artists from across the globe…how did you man­age to get around the lan­guage bar­ri­er?

Most of the people were speak­ing at least a little bit of Eng­lish. Only with a hand­ful of artists I had to involve their friends or my own people. So actu­ally this was not too much of a prob­lem

Q. In Decem­ber you went on a human rights tour in Seneg­al. What were the aims of this tour and what effect if any did it have on you and on your music?

Sis­ter Fa which is also fea­tured on World­wide Rap made a CD called “Paix et Sécur­ité” (Peace and Secur­ity). On each of the 11 songs we focus on one human right. Ca. 40 artists from West Africa par­ti­cip­ated since they felt the need to edu­cate the people about their rights. They said people know what their duties are but they do not know so much about their rights. So the aim was to inform them and empower them. We made con­certs, press con­fer­ences and media emis­sions to pro­mote these songs and mes­sages. It really was a great exper­i­ence. I par­ti­cip­ated in a song called “xam sa bopp” (know your­self) which turned out pretty power­ful. I think we reached a lot of people and I could also made a lot of people smile. For me the whole tour was a very enrich­ing exper­i­ence. I basic­ally got to know three dif­fer­ent situ­ations in one day:
1. Walk­ing around alone in Seneg­al being the only white per­son.
2. Walk­ing around with a group of Sene­g­alese (Black) people.
3. Walk­ing around and per­form­ing on stage with some of the most known HipHop stars of West­a­frica.

So from one minute to the oth­er people’s per­cep­tion of me would totally change which was an inter­est­ing exper­i­ence. I also learned a lot about work­ing with NGOs etc. We had to pre-fin­ance the whole trip and pro­duc­tion and at some point ran out of money and could not do all the con­certs we want to. We still haven’t got any money back so we are all still strug­gling. Still I am proud of every­body involved that they all sac­ri­ficed for a good cause and for social change. Also I want to give a big thanks to the fans that donated a little money for our trip which made everything a little easi­er. Peace and Love

I would not say that this trip changed my music but it reas­sured me that it is import­ant what we are doing and that people are thank­ful that some­body is help­ing them.

Q. What can we expect from LMNZ in the future?

I am put­ting the fin­ish­ing touches on my 2^nd album “Anders als die Besser­en” [ (mean­ing — dif­fer­ent from the bet­ter ones) a word­play on “Bess­er als die Ander­en” (bet­ter than the oth­er ones)] at this very moment. 2 days ago I shot a video with UK rap­per KC Da Rookee whom I was a fan of since I was 13. So a child­hood dream came true for me I also was in con­tact with Poet­ic Pil­grim­age and Logic from the UK to be fea­tured on this album but in the end it didn’t work out. Hope­fully it will in the future I enjoy a lot of music from the UK! Oth­er fea­tures are Nosliw, Bajka, Gun­man Xuman and oth­er inter­na­tion­al guests. The lyr­ics are mainly in Eng­lish and Ger­man; I am rap­ping and pro­du­cing it. A couple of oth­er lan­guages are mixed in here and there but not as extreme as on World­wide Rap. I will put it all out in the next months so stay tuned

Oth­er than that I am doing more pro­jects with Sis­ter Fa and my crew Le Mélange (me, 1 sing­er, 2 B‑Boys and a female dan­cer). Get at us for live shows or pro­jects. You can check me out on www.worldwide-rap.com or con­nect with me on face­book: https://www.facebook.com/LMNZ.Music. As I said I am always happy to con­nect with like­minded people so feel free to holler
Peace and Love and thank you for your atten­tion. LMNZ

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Arash Sharifi

Author at I Am Hip-Hop Magazine

Arash has been pas­sion­ate about Hip hop for many years. He believes through hip hop you can teach, edu­cate and empower people to become bet­ter ver­sions of them­selves and help and sup­port their com­munity and oth­ers. Hip hop is more than just music, it can be a teach­er to us all.

Latest posts by Arash Sharifi (see all)

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