Get To Know Terror Bliss (@TerrorBliss) From The Legionnaires!

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

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Rishma

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds
Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voiceless.

About Rishma

Rishma Dhaliwal has extensive experience studying and working in the music and media industry. Having written a thesis on how Hip Hop acts as a social movement, she has spent years researching and connecting with artists who use the art form as a tool for bringing a voice to the voiceless.

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