Kickin’ It With TY (@tymusic) !

Q. What made you get into Hip Hop?

I think i stumbled into hip hop before I knew all of the sep­ar­ate com­pon­ents were even one.  John Craven’s News­round showed me hip hop break-dan­cing one after­noon, and I was hooked from there.  I heard some pir­ate radio hip hop shows play­ing elec­tro from early and was an avid Mike Alan listen­er, back before West­wood had reared his head, in my eyes.  Then one of my peeps used to rap some lyr­ics to us like they were his, but then I found the song and rapped it back to him like ‘Huh! HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW?!’

Q. You have been in the under­ground Hip Hop scene for a long time, and received a lot of praise from people in the industry. How long did it take you to really get noticed? 

I don’t con­sider myself as being on the scene for a long time.  If you’re born to express your­self, it’s part of my jour­ney.  I don’t even know if i have got prop­erly noticed yet, but its not keep­ing me up at night! I live for the art-form, I live with the art-form and I live beside it, how­ever long it takes!

Q. How would you define your style of music? Has your style evolved over time?

Most people would say I’ve evolved over the years, it’s kind of evid­ent in the records and the sound of my voice.… it’s evid­ent in the music i make. I would leave that up to you to com­ment on.  Mak­ing music to me is like breath­ing and prob­lem solv­ing — you nev­er stop!

Q. Where do you get your lyr­ic­al inspir­a­tion from?

Lyr­ic­ally, I try to be dif­fer­ent.  My style is a simple mat­ter of dis­tilling my influ­ences from my actu­al out­put — I’m not here to copy folks, I’m here to be inspired, so my style is about find­ing things that I think the real me would like to be said and regur­git­at­ing them into a rap form.  I don’t like to be so obvi­ous, that’s prob­ably the poetry side of me.  I try and write things people have to come back and listen to again and again, and maybe pick some­thing up they didn’t catch at first.

Q. You have worked along quite a few artists in the, do you have any memor­ies in par­tic­u­lar from these exper­i­ences that you can share with us?

I work with so many people, on dif­fer­ent levels, I con­sider the musi­cians I work with to be as equally import­ant as the guests, so every­one is dif­fer­ent.  I like to work, and hope­fully eat, with peeps whilst mak­ing music, I think it’s important.

Q. How import­ant is it for you to exper­i­ment with your music. Is there any­thing you would not do when it comes to your music?

I am very prin­cipled as far as music, if I like some­thing, I will do it, if i don’t, I won’t.  I don’t like to band­wag­on jump on genres, just ‘cos they’re hot — not my thing.  I do what I believe in; exper­i­ment­a­tion I always exper­i­ment, but I don’t believe exper­i­ment­a­tion is about doing things you’re not inter­ested in.

Q. With Hip Hop being a plat­form to share know­ledge, how do you edu­cate your­self on world truths? Do you have any books or films or people that inspire you?

Con­stantly look­ing for new doc­u­ment­ar­ies and books, but everything I learn doesn’t neces­sar­ily go into my songs.  I like for things to hap­pen nat­ur­ally.  You­Tube is my haven, I love look­ing for bits of film and info on there, and then look­ing else­where, You­Tube is my favour­ite TV Chan­nel! Hip hop is a plat­form to share any­thing… not just know­ledge or info, it could be tastes in music, win­dows into how oth­ers live, and think, I enjoy all the possibilities!

Q. What oth­er pro­jects are you involved in out­side music?

I am involved in the Hip Hop Shakespeare Com­pany with Akala, I run an event called NoLongT­ing which is a party/art shar­ing event and I also run a group on Face­book called The Beat Inn, which is for pro­du­cers to inter­act, be inspired and pos­sibly work on the same sample as a friendly chal­lenge — to chal­lenge them­selves more than oth­ers.  My main pro­ject is liv­ing life and mak­ing this new album…I’m fight­ing with a title for it right now.

Q. What are you cur­rently work­ing on?

Let­ting people know about my new EP, Kick Snare And An Idea.  Part one came out in April and Part two is ready to drop on 10^th June.

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Rishma Dhali­w­al

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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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