Interview: Europe’s Hip-Hop Scene With @Venomous2000

New Jer­sey’s ultra emcee and out­stand­ing lyr­i­cist Venom­ous 2000, ahead of his anti­cip­ated tour in Europe, caught up with I Am Hip-Hop magazine’s writer Lana Bell to talk about his craft and the Hip-Hop Scene.

Q. How would you describe your­self and the loc­al Hip-Hop scene where you live?

I would describe myself as a humble, patient, hungry artist. By that I mean that I’ve learned how to manuever in this cul­ture in a way that will cause the few­est amounts of head­aches for myself, my fel­low artists, and my fam­ily. I’m a cool, easy, cre­at­ive per­son to work with. As far as the Hip-Hop scene in my area, it’s very diverse and over sat­ur­ated. There are lit­er­ally hun­dreds of rap­pers all try­ing to get heard. You have these pro­moters throw­ing shows, ask­ing artists to pay money for per­form­ances; which essen­tially is geared to have more estab­lished rap­pers to come head­line. It’s cre­at­ing some very inter­est­ing show­cases that will have the most under­ground artists mixed in with com­mer­ic­al trap artists and neither is truly inter­ested in hear­ing the oth­er per­son’s music! 

Q. What inspired you to start free­styl­ing and begin record­ing your music?

I used to free­style with one of my older cous­in’s who was a mem­ber of a rap group called The Deadly Snakes. I wanted to basic­ally be down and like them. We used to play beats and rhyme all day and night. The free­styl­ing even­tu­ally trans­formed to writ­ing. My cous­in sug­ges­ted that I write daily to enhance my free­style abil­it­ies. I stuck with it and con­tin­ued to devel­op my craft over the years.

Q. How has your rela­tion­ship with Hip-Hop music and cul­ture changed through your twenties? 

Wow. As a teen­ager I did­n’t have a focus or any par­tic­u­lar goals. I was just writ­ing for the sake of get­ting bet­ter. As I began to get bet­ter, the real­iz­a­tions of where my music could take and who my music could touch began to grow. I star­ted to meet more and more people that were heav­ily involved in the cul­ture that taught me many things. I no longer craved the atten­tion from my loc­al scene, but rather sought the atten­tion of those from oth­er parts of the coun­try and world. I real­ized that invest­ing time and tak­ing risks were an integ­ral part of grow­ing with­in this cul­ture. I star­ted to take more risks and put myself out there for people to hear, see and critique.

Q. Who are your music­al influ­ences, and how have they influ­enced your material?

I grew up listen­ing to pretty much the same Hip-Hop innov­at­ors that we all have; KrsOne, Rakim, Pub­lic Enemy, Wu-tang Clan, Juice Crew, etc. I was a fan of Hip-Hop music and was influ­enced by man emcees. As I began to grow I star­ted listen­ing to a lot more music out­side of Hip-Hop. I now find myself listen­ing to mainly Afrobeat…Funk…Soul of the 60’s and 70’s, Reg­gae, Jazz., and pretty much any­thing that catches my interest. All of these cat­egor­ies of music have helped my mater­i­al because they all influ­ence me to write and speak about things that I exper­i­ence in life. The more sounds and exper­i­ences that I am exposed to, I feel that I have new plat­forms to speak from. I’m still grow­ing as an artist and am look­ing for inspir­a­tion from oth­er inspir­a­tion­al artists out there with phe­nom­en­al music to share and teach with.

Q. Do people listen to Lon­don rap­pers over there? What do you know of the Lon­don Hip-Hop scene? 

Not many of my per­son­al friends listen to emcees from the UK. There does­n’t seem to be an interest for the most part to be hon­est. I wish there was some more diversity but unfor­tu­nately there isn’t. It’s sad because I’ve learned recently after spend­ing some time in Lon­don, Luton, and Not­ting­ham this past sum­mer, that the cul­ture of Hip-Hop has been alive and vibrant in the UK for quite some time now. As far as artists I know…I have worked with a few artists from the UK includ­ing the likes of Juga­Naut, Scorza­yzee, Van­dal Sav­age, PhiliNDotz, LayzeeD, TheHipHop­Found­a­tion, Prag­mat­ic The­ory, Hand­book, Yeti, and SkitSlam. They are all good friends and really dope artists. I love con­nect­ing with tal­en­ted indi­vidu­als from all over the plan­et! There are some very skill­ful emcees and pro­du­cers out in the UK scene! Massive respect to the UK for rep­res­ent­ing the authentic!

Q. What do you talk about in your music? 

LIFE. As simple as that.

Q. What are you up to at the minute as an artist? Are there any tracks/albums you will be drop­ping soon?

At the cur­rent moment I am push­ing my latest release “Will To Power” that was released this past sum­mer. I’m cur­rently on mark for a Novem­ber ten day tour all through­out France with stops in Par­is, Lille, Le Harve, Metz, Stras­bourg, Orleans and more. Upon the com­ple­tion of the tour, I plan on shop­ping the Will To Power album out to a label or col­lect­ive investor that may be inter­ested in hav­ing the pro­ject pressed on vinyl. I will be film­ing a few more videos for the album and will plan a tour in European for Sum­mer 2016 with pro­jec­ted stops in Ger­many, Czech Repub­lic, Nor­way, France, Spain, and Italy. Dur­ing the same time myself and Ser­bi­an pro­du­cer and engin­eer, Tri­li­an, plan on releas­ing an album that we have togeth­er entitled Sounds Of The Great Ones, that fea­tures Inspec­tah Deck of Wutang, 9^th Prince, The Arti­facts, The Cella Dwel­las, Shabaam Sah­deeq and more. I will also be drop­ping a secret pro­ject with one of Not­ting­ham’s dopest emcees Juga­naut. We were able to knock out an album dur­ing my last European tour. Finally myself Man­sha, DJ EndK, and Architeknic will be work­ing on a Fam­ily Spir­it album with some crazy dope French back­ing. I guess I will busy in the next year or so in terms of music.

If you would like to know more about Venom­ous 2000 please vis­it Venom­ous 2000 Bandcamp 

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Lana Bell

Author / Poetry Edit­or at I Am Hip-Hop 

Lana Bell, is an eight­een year old Lon­don­er who is based in Bris­tol. She is an emer­ging Spoken Word Artist, and the Poetry Edit­or for I Am Hip-Hop Magazine. She has been writ­ing for a dec­ade; though she has only been per­form­ing on from the age of fif­teen. She got into Hip-Hop music at four­teen, and she found a massive interest in Old Skl Sounds and the out­let that Hip-Hop music offered her.

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