Q. When did you encounter your first experience of Hip Hop? What was it that made you want to get involved?
My earliest memory of any impact hip hop had on my life was when I was about 9 years old. The first album I ever owned was Snoop Dogg’s ‘Doggystyle’. I had it on cassette. Didn’t really get what he was talking about, I just liked the beats, hooks, and melodies in general. I used to listen to it on repeat. Before I knew it I knew the raps. It’s a classic!
Never had any real interest in becoming an artist until I was about 18 when I started college. My initial reasoning was being frustrated with the calibre of music that was representing UK hip hop. I thought instead of being frustrated, why don’t I try and do something about it.
Q. Your Therapy Session tracks show a very deep, conscious side to your music, how important is it for you to use your life experiences to convey a message through your music?
I do not classify myself as a conscious rapper. I just speak what’s on my mind at the time. I believe the easiest way to connect with an audience is to give them yourself. Honesty. If you’re being honest in the lyrics you write, naturally you’ll be talking about things that relate to your own life. I think it’s a very important thing to convey that in the music an artist does in order for listeners to relate. If they can relate to you, they’ll always be interested in what you have to say.
Q. Out of all the music you have done, which are your personal favourites and why?
One of my personal favourites would have to be a story I told in a song called ‘Burn’. Probably for the reasons that I didn’t intend to write a story, that’s just what came out. And other MC’s will understand what I did with my continuous rhyme scheme in that song. Another personal fav would probably be a song I done with a great artist called ‘Anyway’. ‘Me’ is the song title. Hopefully we’ll have a video out for it very soon so you can see why lol.
Q. Do you feel it is important to be versatile as a Hip Hop artist? Is there anything you would not do when it comes to your music?
I guess most people understand that if you’re a one dimensional type artist, you’ll probably go out of fashion at some point, especially if you can’t bring something new to the table throughout your career. The bigger the arsenal of skills you have as an artist, whether it’s being able to write songs for other people or being able to hold your own on different genres of music, the better in my opinion.
I’m pretty open-minded but the only thing I’m against when I think about it is conforming. I’m anti-conformist to the core. We’re living a meaningless life if we are stopped from expressing ourselves freely. For me that’s the same as being shackled. A caged bird so to speak. You’ll never catch me making music to tick a box.
Q. Many have labelled Hip Hop as an alternative news platform. How do you educate yourself world truths? Do you have any books or films or people that inspire you?
Bottom line — if you don’t read you don’t learn. Without reading you only know what is told or fed to you through media or ‘hearsay’. The only way to be truly educated is to pick a book up, read it, then do your research on how authentic the source of the information is. Most of the reading I do is informational, not books so much. To be completely honest, I’m mostly inspired by people who are not afraid to be themselves. People in general inspire me. To add, I think that ‘The Matrix’ has probably been one of the most inspirational films of our generation.
Q. Are you involved in any projects outside of music, or are you looking to get involved?
I hope that one day, when I am in a position to, I’ll be able to travel to certain countries of choice and put time into making a difference for those less fortunate than your average westerner.
Q. What have you got coming up as a solo artist and/or with your group the Legionnaires?
We’re each working on solo EP’s this year. We’re also thinking about releasing another free collaborative mix CD. We’ve already released merchandise in the form of hoodies that are currently available via legionnaires.bandcamp.com. We have more videos and merchandise on the way as well our official website launch.
To find out more about Terror Bliss visit his Facebook page and check out the Legionnaires at http://legionnaires.bandcamp.com/
Rishma Dhaliwal
Rishma
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