INTERVIEW |INTRODUCING LAST LIFE D’SERIOUS

Who and what has influ­enced your music­al sound so far?

From when I was a child, the music that was always on repeat in our house was the sound soul, Motown, funk, reg­gae, etc. So the groove and rhythm and soul of that music remains very much alive in the music I cre­ate. Then, going through teen­age years, I was incred­ibly con­nec­ted with the vibes of gar­age, jungle and DnB, with the odd indul­gence In Evan­es­cence, Metal­lica and SOAD. My first con­nec­tion with Hip Hop was through UK Hip Hop when I was at Uni in Manchester. I was entranced by the con­scious lyr­ics from artists such as Jeh­st and Lowkey, and I had a radio show with Dj Taffa, called, ‘The Homegrown Beats Show.’ From t meat time, the beats of hip hop awoke a beat in my heart that hasn’t stopped since. This inspired me to write lyr­ics. Just the oth­er day I found my first lyr­ic writ­ten on an amal­gam­a­tion of rizzla papers.

Most recently, I have been absorb­ing the devo­tion­al music and chants from artists such as Jai Jag­deesh and Snatam Kaur. Life also, has played a huge, if not big­ger part, than the music.

Over the years, my lyr­ics have been influ­enced by my own inner emo­tion­al struggle, and the ordeal of simply liv­ing on this earth in its cur­rent state, as well as the spir­itu­al angst felt in seek­ing Truth in this ‘half-made world where love has yet to take its toll’, yet in a Bright­er mood, more recently, in the Grace of See­ing Truth, Real­ity and Love, bey­ond all of that

What is the story behind where your name came from?

Well, you know what. I kinda feel like a cat some­times, you know. Learn­ing les­sons, not learn­ing les­sons, learn­ing the same les­sons and so on and so forth, and with a com­bin­a­tion of a hedon­ist­ic crisis in my early twen­ties and the Spir­itu­al Grace that has been a under­cur­rent of my life since then (and prob­ably pri­or to), there is this feel­ing that this is my last chance almost —  to take this life I have ser­i­ously, so it is char­ac­ter­ised by Love, Strength, and Ser­vice and Feel­ing Bey­ond the pat­tern­ing of this body-mind into That Spir­itu­al Grace I men­tioned, with the heart of spir­itu­al war­ri­or. Hence, Last Life D’Serious

In what dir­ec­tion do you see your music going in?

I will always love mak­ing straight up Hip Hop licks with just the right amount of heart and rebel, which is reflec­ted in my debut album released last year, ‘The Great Search’. And I have been work­ing with pro­du­cers in dif­fer­ent parts of the world on more tracks like this. Music­ally, the com­bin­a­tion of the boom bap with melod­ies on a track will always be some­thing I do. Cur­rently, how­ever, I am in the middle of a Sac­red Hip Hop album — a com­bin­a­tion of uplift­ing and inspir­ing and devo­tion­al raps, with chant­ing (ran­ging from Sanskrit, Eng­lish to Fiji­an) laid upon tra­di­tion­al and mod­ern instru­ment­a­tion. I call it, ‘Hip Hop From The Awaken­ing Heart’

Tracks like “The Essence” really cap­ture a unique sound, what was your pro­cess to cre­at­ing this type of track?

I worked on this track with a child­hood friend, Reg­gie. An amaz­ing pro­du­cer, musi­cian and friend. I had already writ­ten the sung intro, but it soun­ded com­pletely dif­fer­ent to how it does now and the nota­tion was a bit all over the place! We lit­er­ally went through each line and phrase, one by one, match­ing the piano to each one and decided the next nota­tion after the pre­vi­ous line has been recor­ded. In terms on the oth­er sounds, Reg­gie cre­ated that hyp­not­ic base line and ori­gin­al beat arrange­ment and the lyr­ics were inspired from there. Through the track, we kept adding dif­fer­ent sounds and vocals, but they nev­er added any­thing to the feel of the track, so we stripped in down and allowed the sim­pli­city of the beat and bars to trans­mit what needed to be trans­mit­ted in this track. Some­times with pro­duc­tion, and this is some­thing I am learn­ing myself, less is more; espe­cially the tempta­tion of a mil­lion sound packs and plu­gins that are avail­able now.

If you could decide, what would you like your listen­er to take from your music?

The essence and feel­ing which I exper­i­enced when cre­at­ing it, and which I have been blessed as being the vehicle for it to arrive in this world. Wheth­er is it Hope, LOve, Under­stand­ing, Relief, Release, Insight, Beauty, Catharsis…

How do you define con­scious­ness and awakened intuition?

I would define con­scious­ness in the same terms as my Spir­itu­al Master,

‘’Con­scious­ness Is The Inher­ently Free Radi­ance, or Bliss, or Hap­pi­ness (Itself), Merely Being Self-Radi­ant, appear­ing to be mod­i­fied as all forms and changes.’’

And I exper­i­ence awakened intu­ition to be resid­ing from the Heart, a feel­ing-sense of the Real­ity, Hap­pi­ness, & Love that is pri­or to and bey­ond this body-mind, not affected by any con­di­tion what­so­ever, and always already avail­able to com­mune with, and Sur­render to as the guid­ing prin­ciple of my life. The Sun is Always above the clouds.

Why do you think it’s import­ant to remain self-aware when facing dif­fi­culties or times of ordeal?

Because they are gifts for trans­form­a­tion, for heal­ing. In terms of crisis and ordeal, we all have our default — what we nor­mally do. And that can gen­er­ate and per­petu­ate karma which has the oppor­tun­ity to be dis­solved and pur­i­fied in such ordeals. They may be the very basis of the ordeal — karm­ic! if we make decisions based on Love & Tran­scend­ence, going bey­ond our auto­mat­ic, pat­terned, default reac­tion, then the whole situ­ation can be changed, almost like a pro­cess of alchemy — put­ting in ‘stuff’ and get­ting pure gold. And it is self-aware­ness that allows us the objectiv­ity to not be caught up in what we nor­mally do in order to do that.

What does the future hold for Last Life D’Serious?

I have a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent pro­jects that I am work­ing on cur­rently ‑from pro­mot­ing a vegan rap and per­form­ing it at vegan fest­ivals to run­ning Enga­ging, Edu­ca­tion­al and Empower­ing Rap/Spoken Word/Poetry work­shops with children/teenagers. But the pro­ject that is inspir­ing me the most is the fol­low­ing. I see myself hold­ing spaces which com­bine the dif­fer­ent ener­gies I have shared in this inter­view. The space will be for par­ti­cip­at­ory per­form­ance. A space where, through my facil­it­a­tion and in with col­lab­or­a­tion with oth­er artists, those in the space, exper­i­ence and par­ti­cip­ate in uplift­ing, heal­ing and inspir­ing chants/choruses. Then there will be the raps I share that simply add to the feel­ing-sense of what that par­tic­u­lar chant/chorus trans­mits, evokes and invokes. All com­bined with a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent instru­ments and (of course) beats, Bhakti Beats! A space that wel­come every­one regard­less of the genre they nor­mally con­nect with — it is for those who wish to enter a sac­red space, to let go, to feel, and allow the music & melod­ies to dance them! After all everything is vibra­tion, everything is sound, an etern­al echo of Love & Truth. And music affords us a rare oppor­tun­ity to take a dip in that deep well. So, let’s dive in!

#hri­da­yareal­ness

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Aisha

Aisha is a Writer and Research­er based in Lon­don. She Thanks you for reading.

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