INTERVIEW | RARE TRILL DISCUSSES DEBUT ALBUM ‘GRAFTERS SEASON’

Release Date: April 19^th, 2024

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Intro­du­cing Rare Trill, whose debut album “Grafters Sea­son” has been mak­ing waves in the music industry. This pro­ject isn’t just about beats and rhymes—it’s a test­a­ment to resi­li­ence, pas­sion, and the pro­found impact of per­son­al loss. Rare Trill’s jour­ney, inter­twined with the memory of his late cous­in Justin Har­vey, infuses every note of this deeply emotive album. Join us as we unravel the intric­ate lay­ers of “Grafters Sea­son” and dis­cov­er the heart and soul behind Rare Trill’s mes­mer­iz­ing music­al odys­sey.

Con­grat­u­la­tions on the release of your debut album “Grafters Sea­son”! It’s evid­ent that this pro­ject car­ries sig­ni­fic­ant emo­tion­al weight for you, stem­ming from the passing of your cous­in Justin Har­vey. Can you tell us more about how his influ­ence shaped the album’s cre­ation and what listen­ers can expect to exper­i­ence in terms of the emo­tion­al jour­ney you’ve cur­ated?

Thank you, my cous­ins sud­den passing was the biggest motiv­at­or behind cre­at­ing this pro­ject as it con­firmed to me life is short and can pass you by in seconds if you don’t grab it by the horns. He knew I was extremely pas­sion­ate about music as well as foot­ball, and always would go on and on about me tak­ing either of them ser­i­ous and being the golden light for the fam­ily.
Listen­ers can expect to be taken on an emo­tion­al roller­coast­er from the smooth­ness but deep top­ic sub­ject of ‘KRK’, to the brag­gado­cio but motiv­at­ing sub­ject mat­ter in ‘Busi­ness Expenses’.

“Grafter­’s Sea­son” seems to blend ele­ments of old-school hip-hop and soul­ful R&B with mod­ern pro­duc­tion and lyr­ic­al flows. How did you nav­ig­ate the fusion of these dif­fer­ent styles, and what inspired you to explore such a diverse son­ic land­scape for your debut album?

Grow­ing up my mum always exposed me to great music from early wheth­er it was Rare Groove, Neo-soul, Reg­gae, R&B & even Jungle /DnB, so thats where my soul­ful influ­ences come from. As I got older I star­ted to learn more about Hip-Hop and it would be my eld­er cous­ins who would show me a load of Under­ground UK Rap­pers and hard­core street rap from the US. Once I star­ted my music­al cre­ation jour­ney, I grav­it­ated to soul­ful sound­ing beats and incor­por­at­ing hard hit­ting mean­ing­ful lyr­ics across such sound­scapes!

You men­tioned that the album is a solo endeavor, without any fea­tures, to allow you to con­vey your story dir­ectly to listen­ers. Can you elab­or­ate on the themes and mes­sages you wanted to con­vey through your lyr­ics, and why it was import­ant for you to share this nar­rat­ive on your own terms?

It was import­ant for me to come out the gates alone in terms of hav­ing no fea­tures, espe­cially with this being my first album. The themes through­out the whole pro­ject is of a “Graft­ing” nature, which essen­tially means work­ing hard without cut­ting corners! I feel like the hard­est work­ers of soci­ety are often for­got­ten about even though they are integ­ral to pro­gress­ing soci­ety.

Grow­ing up in South Lon­don, you’ve been immersed in a rich music­al and cul­tur­al envir­on­ment. How has your upbring­ing influ­enced your sound and lyr­ic­al con­tent, par­tic­u­larly in a pro­ject like “Grafters Sea­son”?

I feel like grow­ing up in south Lon­don through­out the 2000s has def­in­itely shaped my music­al jour­ney. Some of the best rap­pers in the world come out of South Lon­don. So being from the South, to pick up that mic you either have to be a Shakespeare with the pen or a ser­i­ous respec­ted indi­vidu­al, there’s no in-between. You feel that on “Grafters Sea­son”, Rare Trill is push­ing that pen at an astro­nom­ic­al rate. The flows, the cadence, the double entendres are all next level.

Your jour­ney in the music industry star­ted back in 2012 with free­style videos and cul­min­ated in the release of your debut mix­tape in 2015. How do you feel your growth as an artist has evolved from those early begin­nings to now, with the release of your debut album?

The growth in my music has just been side by side with the growth in me as a human being.
I learned how to rap around age 13 so I guess my earli­est music wasn’t exactly super pol­ished or even greatly thought out, just impuls­ive reac­tions to instru­ment­als. Fast for­ward­ing to now, I know exactly how I want to sound and be received by fans. I envi­sion how I am going to per­form most songs whilst writ­ing, I under­stand how to use my cur­rent feel­ings and emo­tions wheth­er neg­at­ive or pos­it­ive to tran­scend that feel­ing into music. So incor­por­at­ing what I’ve grown to learn in my first debut pro­ject I’m pos­it­ive

As the founder of the “Grafters Only” move­ment, you’ve cham­pioned ded­ic­a­tion and resi­li­ence in your music and col­lab­or­a­tions. How do these prin­ciples mani­fest in “Grafters Sea­son,” both in terms of the lyr­ic­al con­tent and the over­all vibe of the album?

As I believe that Graft­ing is a way of life, it is rein­stat­ing time and time again in most of the tracks on the pro­ject, how­ever the vibe of the pro­ject is a motiv­a­tion­al one, which serves as audio fuel to help motiv­ate and push you whilst you live every­day life .

Your influ­ences span a wide range of artists, from Styles P to Wiz Khal­ifa to West­side Gunn. How do these diverse influ­ences shape your artist­ic iden­tity, and can we hear traces of these influ­ences in “Grafter­’s Sea­son”?

I wouldn’t say you can hear traces of oth­er artists in my own solo album, I would always say I’ve cre­ated my own type of lane and feel­ing with the music I have made, music that rep­lic­ates no oth­er that you’ve heard before. How­ever the lyr­ic­al sharp­ness of Styles P, the cadence of Wiz Khal­ifa and the cre­ativ­ity of West­side Gunn are all things I appre­ci­ate and am inspired by.

With your debut album out now, what do you hope listen­ers will take away from the pro­ject, both in terms of the music itself and the per­son­al jour­ney it rep­res­ents for you?

My main aim with the pro­ject is to pierce the music scene and become a dis­ruptor you can’t deny!

I’ve spent months mak­ing sure all of my music leg­al­it­ies are in order from own­ing the music to get­ting paid all by myself with no man­age­ment what­so­ever. I under­stand how to pitch music for film and sync and so much oth­er know­ledge in the music busi­ness. So it would be nice to show fel­low cre­at­ors how to mon­et­ise effi­ciently from our art But over­all I hope that those who listen to the pro­ject thor­oughly enjoy the pro­ject and listen to it many times over!

“Grafters Sea­son” is described as a reflec­tion of your per­sona and music­al­ity. How do you bal­ance authen­ti­city with innov­a­tion in your music, ensur­ing that your sound remains true to your­self while also push­ing bound­ar­ies and evolving cre­at­ively?

Very good ques­tion! Again growth in music is per­pen­dic­u­lar to growth as a human being, by that I mean every­day I am inspired by things I’ve seen, read, hear and it’s easy for me to inter­n­al­ise how I feel and get that out on pen and paper crossed with exper­i­ment­ing on a dif­fer­ent BPM or try­ing vari­ous flows.

Look­ing ahead, what’s next for Rare Trill after the release of “Grafters Sea­son”? Are there any future pro­jects or col­lab­or­a­tions on the hori­zon that fans can look for­ward to?

After the release of “Grafters Sea­son”, I will be drop­ping an E.P entitled “Nobody­cares,” which will be a fol­low up to the last track on “Grafters Sea­son”, entitled ‘Who Cares?’. I essen­tially answer that ques­tion in “Nobody­cares”. But once you have fully con­sumed Grafters Sea­son you’ll under­stand the vis­ion! Sym­phon­ies of The Graft 2 Mix­tape will be out later this year as-well as planned fea­tures with vari­ous artists such as Smooth Pekz, Luch Pirelli, Mar­zOrDume, I‑See, Ver­bz and many more tal­en­ted artists & pro­du­cers!

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Rishma Dhaliwal

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. Cur­rently work­ing in TV, Rishma brings her PR and media know­ledge to I am Hip Hop and oth­er pro­jects by No Bounds.

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