Exclusive Interview: Guerrilla Republik Scandinavia

Q. Thank you for the chance to inter­view you all. Could you tell us who Guer­rilla Repub­lik Scand­inavia con­sist of how you all came togeth­er?

Capital‑X:  Thank you for the opp. OK, there is Lord For­Show from Nor­way, who is co-founder with me Cap­it­al X. There is Jr. Hype who is our Jr. exec­ut­ive, Yenemes­is and Sheepy who are bricks in our very found­a­tion. We also have Miss Rock­nrolla, Taz, Shorty Doo Wop and Shishko hold­ing down K‑Town (Kris­ti­ansand, Nor­way) with a long list of sup­port­ers. We have Fallen, PK, Hege and Elisa hold­ing us down in Oslo Triz and Dano in Sweden, Two Towers in Den­mark. What could best explain how we all came togeth­er is, it called us all. From dif­fer­ent places and dif­fer­ent struggles it called us and we came togeth­er to help one anoth­er under our mis­sion.

Guer­rilla Repub­lik’s Mis­sion State­ment: Guer­rilla Repub­lik draws its inspir­a­tion from the first suc­cess­ful slave revolt in Haiti 1794. This rebel­lion exem­pli­fies unity, strength, determ­in­a­tion and will of God. Our mis­sion is to stim­u­late minds and expand the dynam­ics of think­ing in our inner cit­ies and motiv­ate indi­vidu­als to take pro­act­ive approach to like through edu­ca­tion, self-reli­ance and pre­pared­ness. Only the real­ist feel this.

Q. Jr.Hype what made you decide to work with rap­pers like Capital‑X, Sheepy and Yenemes­is?

Jr.Hype: Well there are a lot of things that made me want to work with these guys. Guer­rilla Repub­lik Scand­inavia is a big chapter with a lot of Great sup­port­ers and tal­en­ted people, and its just a great thing to be a part of it. They are all very ded­ic­ated people to work with, so that kind of gives me more motiv­a­tion to be a part of this move­ment – and to do what I love as well. Just to wake up in the morn­ing and know that you got com­rades like that around your­self is a new energy. And mark my words, we will con­tin­ue to rise till we reach our goal, and yes – we will make it happened.

Q. Cap­it­al X as you are from New York what lead to your inspir­a­tion to set up a chapter of Guer­rilla Repub­lik in Nor­way?

Capital‑X: I was fresh out of pris­on try­ing to piece my life togeth­er. I was work­ing on my rehab­il­it­a­tion and recov­ery hard when I met Guer­rilla Repub­lik. GR helped me in count­less ways; most import­antly filling this huge void I had in my life. I was chan­ging people, places and things and even with­in the hip hop cul­ture I lived in since the late 70’s early 80’s changed so much it was­n’t doing it for me. I needed the golden era back so to speak. GR filled that void and some. I felt like I found my spot. I felt the love and the camarader­ie was just what I needed to keep me in line. When the oppor­tun­ity presen­ted itself to move to Nor­way the first thing I thought of was to bring GR with me and give it to the people hop­ing it would do for oth­ers what it had done for me. Instead of just build­ing Guer­rilla Repub­lik Nor­way, We chose Guer­rilla Repub­lik Scand­inavia to sym­bol­ize unity. The Scand­inavi­an coun­tries have been pretty much sep­ar­ated forever so we thought unit­ing the hip hop com­munit­ies in Scand­inavia would be a great start and very bene­fi­cial to all includ­ing sur­round­ing coun­tries and here we are build­ing with fam­ily from the UK today.

Q. Cap­it­al X what rap­pers would you say have inspired you thought your career and why?

First and fore­most Grand Mas­ter Melle Mel. When Melle Mel along with Grand Mas­ter Flash and Furi­ous Five dropped The Mes­sage, that was it for me. Till this day, I bump that and till this day I try to imple­ment a mes­sage in all my tracks and poems. Also, KRS ONE, Chuck D, Wise Intel­li­gent, Guru, Smooth Da Hust­ler, Kool G Rap, NAS and Tupac any­one who is say­ing some­thing rel­ev­ant. I love a dope flow but if you ain’t say­ing some­thing what is it good for? All these heads taught me some­thing valu­able. They made me run to dic­tion­ar­ies, and to book stores…inspired me to want to do some­thing with my life. They gave me hope. They made me want to be the best I could be unlike today where most rap­pers be talk­ing about the destruct­ive beha­vi­or that ruined my life. Guer­rilla Repub­lik stands firm on true hip hop as I feel the above men­tioned do. Sorry but I don’t care how dope your tracks are…if you ain’t say­ing some­thing con­struct­ive you gets no plays here.

Q. Sheepy and Yenemes­is you both form rap group Leth­al Injec­tion and your latest album is called frombloodtoink. Can you tell us what Leth­al Injec­tion is all about and what top­ics your album cov­ers?

Leth­al Injec­tion: For us leth­al injec­tion describes our music as you see it live on stage or hear it on a record, a deadly dose of beast­ing music to your ears. The name it self is dark and I think we are both inspired by dark­ness when we wright. We both have dif­fer­ent back­grounds but still have been though a lot of hard­ship in our life. We can relate to that dark feel­ing and music is meant to be from the hart and soul so that’s our sound. It is exper­i­ence and life as we have lived it. With that said if we where to say that we are going to chop your head of and bury it under a tree it don’t mean we are actu­ally gonna do it but believe me we both have been in a place of want­ing to inflict pain upon someone so we can relate to that feel­ing. We are peace­ful people now and music is ther­apy, we all have our demons and leth­al injec­tion is all about tak­ing those demons and let­ting them out on a stage. When it comes to the album name Yenemes­is can explain that bet­ter than me but for me it is the struggle from when I had noth­ing to the point where the pen and ink, words etc came to life and gave me some­thing to hang on to when things were ruff. Music is power!

Yenemes­is add: The album tittle means from pain to words, feel­ings to lyr­ics, blood to ink. To turn some­thing bad to some­thing good by any means neces­sary.

Q. Leth­al Injec­tion what rap­pers would you say have inspired you both thought your career and why?

Leth­al Injec­tion: Oo man we kinda hate that ques­tion because there are so many. We are fans of immor­tal tech no descrip­tion needed there and we both love 90’s hip hop, so Wu Tang, King Tee, Mobb Deep, Big l, Pun, 2pac the list keeps going.

Sheppy also add: Also I’m a big fan of grime. Why I am inspired? I don’t know, that’s what qual­ity music does to a per­son. Some tracks help you trough times when no one will listen, you put that music on and feel good. A lot of the cats I men­tion here have done that for me.

Q. At the moment you are on tour around Europe. How did you find the hip hop scene in Lon­don and do you plan to come back?

Capital‑X: The hip hop scene in Lon­don from the view I got was great. We were well received with mad love and we gave that love right back which is what it’s all about. There is so much unheard of tal­ent in Lon­don we are def­in­itely going to return and we hope to bring some Lon­don tal­ent to Scand­inavia. Our tour has noth­ing to do with mak­ing fans LOL, it has everything to do with meet­ing fam­ily, build­ing with fam­ily and mak­ing big­ger and bet­ter things mani­fest in the near future.

Q. What can we expec­ted from Guer­rilla Repub­lik Scand­inavia, Jr.Hype, Capital‑X and Leth­al Injec­tion next?

Leth­al Injec­tion: L.I plans? To keep grind­ing, push­ing our brand bring­ing the music to the people and stay humble doing it. Appre­ci­at­ing every moment when we get to meet new people that have love for hip hop and build rela­tions with dope mcs when pos­sible. If the future brings it, make tables turn of music, sup­port our fam­il­ies and keep grow­ing. We will also be in the stu­dio through sum­mer and are already half way through our second album O.T.R.F.T (Only the real­ist feel this). There is going be some dope people on it to reveal. We got Sean Strange and his man buddy on a c‑lance pro­duc­tion and our vis­it to Lon­don made us some new con­tacts that we deffo wanna build with and have as fea­tures.

Capital‑X: From Guer­rilla Repub­lik Scand­inavia, you can expect growth. Lots and lots of growth. Get used to hear­ing the name Guer­rilla Repub­lik. Lon­don Street Cypher 2 is com­ing up so keep your ears to the streets. As far as me per­son­ally, I have my sopho­more album in the works which I hope to drop this year. Got some dope fea­tures on it…artists I have looked up to over the years so yea, look­ing to get that out and just keep heal­ing the hip hop cul­ture. Hip hop don’t need sav­ing, but it sure needs some heal­ing as do we all.

Guer­rilla Repub­lik is a grass­roots under ground hip hop groove­ment built on the ori­gin­al found­a­tion in which hip hop was foun­ded. It’s all about peace, unity, love and hav­ing fun. There are a lot of mis­con­cep­tions about GR just as there is in hip hop as a whole but if you take the time to do your home­work it is easy to see what we are truly about. The brand, the appar­el go hand in hand with our mis­sion which comes first.

Jr.Hype: Yea X said it, We have a lot of plans for Guer­rilla Repub­lik Scand­inavia. Dif­fer­ent hip hop shows in Kris­ti­ansand. Free Cyphers in both Kris­ti­ansand and Oslo. Also we will con­tin­ue our Recon Tour – we just had a hip hop show in Den­mark for the Recon Tour, the crowd there was awe­some so we will def­in­itely go back there when we can. We also have a show in Ger­many for the Recon Tour. Which is a birth of a new chapter of Guer­rilla Repub­lik in Ger­many. Poland is also on the list for the Recon Tour, so yea – Europe will see us on the move this year. We also have a lot of Great stuff for the sum­mer and after the sum­mer. We will be at Hip Hop Kemp in Czech Repub­lic in August car­ry­ing the mes­sage of Guer­rilla Repub­lik to the people

For more info on all things GR make sure you check out:

www.grepscandinavia.com
www.g‑rep.com
www.guerrillarepublik.org

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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.

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