Interview: Kickin’ It With Consensus !

I am Hip Hop returns with anoth­er fant­ast­ic and insight­ful inter­view as Seth Pereira gets the chance to put some ques­tions to Lon­don Based rap­per Con­sensus. We talk everything from his proudest achieve­ments music­ally to the dis­cuss­ing his latest pro­ject The Con­tract in depth. Make sure you have a listen to Con­sensus after learn­ing a little bit more about what makes him tick!

You’ve per­formed in a wide range of dif­fer­ent loc­ales. Was there a par­tic­u­lar favour­ite place you’ve per­formed at and why?

Hmmm that’s really tough! To be hon­est its got to be a tie between Prague and Geneva! Since both are coun­tries where Eng­lish isn’t their first lan­guage, but they can still appre­ci­ate so read­ily the stage pres­ence and energy its just an amaz­ing exper­i­ence. I’m cer­tainly humbled to be put on most stages though as long as the crowd has a good energy to vibe off. With out a doubt also, nuff love for the home town Lon­don too!

For people that don’t know you’re the Founder of A/V revolu­tion media plat­form, Can you tell us abit about some of the work that you guys do? How import­ant are these plat­forms to artists try­ing to make head­way in the music industry?

A/V Revolu­tion is basic­ally my attempt at build­ing plat­form to pro­mote sim­il­ar artists to myself and cre­ate some altern­at­ive con­tent from the main­stream rhet­or­ic that we’re gen­er­ally fed on a reg­u­lar basis. When i say sim­il­ar I’m really just refer­ring to how things like, an ‘out of the box’ approach, inform­at­ive,  or under­ground kind of vibe. Per­son­ally i stay away from polit­ics but the plat­form is there for artist to speak and edu­cate their fans and read­ers about them, their music and touch on nor­mal relat­able sub­jects, so often this might have a polit­ic­al nar­rat­ive too. Really we’re just try­ing to make a space that means media isn’t always seen in one way. I’ve been work­ing on a few webtech tools to help artist pro­mote their music too, we have those for artist to access free or pur­chase!

Lets mix the pop­u­lar stuff with the stuff which can help us through life too! Music and visu­als are a power­ful tool! Audio Visu­al Revolu­tion!

You refer to your­self as a “philo­soph­ic­al” rap­per rather than a polit­ic­al one. Is there any­one else out there that inspires you to write music in this vein?

To put it simply, music is a good ther­apy for me. It just helps me come to terms with the shap­ing of real­ity as i grow and gain exper­i­ence in life. So at the times i take to reflect and under­stand what’s going on it helps to con­sol­id­ate the inform­a­tion and moods in music.

I just spend a lot of time think­ing about every­one, everything, and how things might turn out. Life. The world. The uni­verse. How can we/should we change them? Mor­als are a super inter­est­ing top­ic for me atm.  I think the lyr­ics in the the song ‘The Briefcase’ accur­ately describe where I’m at right now might bet­ter than a few sen­tences here.. or i could go on for days!

Do you feel that we are going to see a return of lyr­i­cism in the main­stream with the likes of Cole and Kendrick doing so well com­mer­cially? Is this a sign of a paradigm shift?

Do you want the hon­est answer or the optim­ist­ic one? lol I do hope that we’ll see a new type of artistry emerge after people have just over sat­ur­ated the mar­ket with their “McDon­alds music” but in truth I do see that soci­ety does­n’t allow for people to eas­ily make time to be healthy, self reflect­ing, self actu­at­ing, pro­gress­ive human beings. So when you put con­scious music + lyr­i­cism in the mix.. it becomes a chore to digest it rather than songs like Actav­is (Migos + Soulja boy) where the simple rhet­or­ic is there and it often does­n’t even mat­ter about the words or the con­tent.. the music­al ele­ment might win over lyr­ics. Espe­cially artists like Kendrick are doing so many things in a song most people will not appre­ci­ate it unless they were to really break it down. Like he’s not the best lyr­i­cist but is an awe­some hip hop song writer. His approach to tracks is def­in­itely worthy of schol­arly study in my opin­ion, but not every­one is try­ing to be smart. Sadly smart does­n’t always make you rich quick and easy money every­one wants.. smart­ness (lyr­i­cism)  does­n’t seem like an appeal­ing trait at the moment. When we need to be smarter as a soci­ety we’ll be ready for it. Even me.. i love lyr­i­cism, but I’m not always try­ing to hear it.. only like 75% of the time with rap­pers lol, but if the music is son­ic­ally good too then I’m sold!

As a ‘lyr­ic­al rap­per too its a bal­ance between find some­thing worth say­ing and hav­ing people want to listen. Espe­cially in live music, its a tough one for sure! But we are in the inform­a­tion age. and people are pro­cessing more and more info each day, when we’ve used up all the basic stuff..enter lyr­i­cism!

What can you tell the people about your latest offer­ing The Con­tract? What can fans expect to hear?

Ok, so what can i say about the con­tract? Basic­ally the idea is put for­ward pretty well in the in the lyr­ics of the first track ‘The Briefcase’. The EP explores the idea of a con­tract being signed and the things one might have to do ful­fil their end of the deal. The con­tract for me explores ideas of free­dom, and soci­ety and a gen­er­al struggle we might have to go through with the 2. The sample style is very kind of old­skool crime movie themed. We wanted cine­mat­ic and vivid. The beats + pro­duc­tion was all curt­sey of Phy­ba­Op­tikz of Crate Diviz­ion. You guys def­in­itely need to check him out, his pro­duc­tion and rap style is awe­some and real unique! Really glad to be build­ing with Crate Diviz­ion too there workrate is immense!

For someone who has only been doing music since 2011 you have an impress­ive resume. What is your proudest achieve­ment to date and why?

Yeah I mean , I’ve been writ­ing from way before that under a dif­fer­ent ali­as but I only really took things ser­i­ously in 2011. With out a doubt the proudest achieve­ment has been the col­lab­or­a­tion pro­ject I’m doing with the LHC (Large  Had­ron Col­lider) in Switzer­land aka CERN! It will be rap influ­enced, music­al inter­pret­a­tion of the sci­ence going on there! Hope­fully it will be a good step in bridging the gap between art and sci­ence (edu­ca­tion), hope­fully it will be well received!

What does the future hold for Con­sensus? What’s com­ing up on the hori­zon?

Man, its bet­ter if i just list the things com­ing up because some­times it changes so much I for­get! That’s just the way it goes some­times. But from of Feb 2016 we’ll have #TheCon­tract tour in NY/Canada with myself and Phy­ba­Op­tikz, after the CERN pro­ject should also be com­plete. I’m put­ting out a self-pro­duced mix­tape soon too called  Con­Censored. There a are a few inter­na­tion­al col­lab­or­a­tion in the works with peeps in Geneva, Prague and Italy, some live band stuff and grime… Just try­ing to build really. But I’m grate­ful for what the uni­verse throws my way so we’ll see!

S/O to A/V Revolu­tion, world­Wi­de­con­nects, Crate Diviz­ion, High­er Learn­ing, EoW, FWD360, Res­ist­ance Record­ings, IAm­Hiphop­Magazine, Art@CMS, Bass Drop Crew, The Greys and all oth­ers I’m build­ing with or who are show­ing sup­port! Peace and love!

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Seth Pereira

A bud­ding music Journ­al­ist spe­cial­iz­ing in all things hip hop. Who Occa­sion­ally dabbles in polit­ic­al ram­bling.

Latest posts by Seth Pereira (see all)

• Inter­view: Intro­du­cing THE NEW BLXCK (@TheNewBlxck) — March 1, 2017
• Inter­view With King­pin (@KingpinLondon) ! — Feb­ru­ary 5, 2016
• Inter­view: Kickin’ It With Con­sensus ! — Janu­ary 18, 2016

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