IN CONVERSATION: TRUEMENDOUS
Music
IN CONVERSATION:
TRUEMENDOUS
High Focus has a new artist on the roster. But TrueMendous and her straitjacket-wrapped alter-ego have been floating on the ether for a while, so fresh listeners have a deep back catalogue of projects to get to know, with solo releases and acapella poems in amongst collaborations with Verb T, Mouse Outfit and Black Josh. What’s clear is that TrueMendous really knows the craft, understanding exactly how to string a verse together to get a reaction and playing with intricate sound patterns that tell of her background in spoken word. In the wake of her newly released EP ‘HUH?’, we talked about weird visuals, lyricism and calling yourself out as mad before anyone else does
Imagrey:
Tom Shotton
Words:
Lorum Ipsum
ADS: You just got signed to High Focus – how’s life changed since then?
T: It hasn’t, I’m still in the early stages man. I signed to them in October last year but obviously we didn’t announce it until three weeks ago. We didn’t want to announce it and then have a large gap between the first release so yeah, we’ve got about two videos out now and the EP, but I wouldn’t say much has changed. I still do street performing and people have been coming up to me saying ‘oh you’re signed to High Focus, can i have a picture?’ but for the most part life’s still the same.ADS: The new release O.T.Y.L Part 2 follows on from a track released in 2016 and in it you ask ‘why we here again?’ Why are we here again, why did you choose to follow on from it?Independently, O.T.Y.L Part 1 did best out of all the singles I’ve put out, so I just used it as a way to say thank you to myself a few years ago. There’s a few songs that I plan to do part 2s and part 3s of so I thought, you know what, let me just pay homage to myself back then.
ADS: Is it still the same thing making you mad?Yeh, it’s just a bit of humour embedded in it, family dynamics, being a recluse, sometimes there’s a message in there, sometimes there’s not.ADS: You’ve already worked on projects with Verb T and Pitch 92 over the past couple of years – what do you look for in a collaboration?I just have to appreciate them as a lyricist, I like challenging and I like challenges. If it’s a producer I have to like what they’re proposing to me, I’m not gonna do it just because your name’s relatively big. Quality is what I look for.ADS: Do you treat poetry and hip hop as the same medium or are there some things which are better expressed when they’re not pinned to a track?Mm, I don’t really separate them but because I intertwine both – I do poetry nights and I do hip hop events too. So anything that I do in a poetry night is usually what I’ve written to a song, I’ve just extracted the beat and I’m doing it acapella right now, but I don’t filter or anything, it is what it is, just take it, it’s expression. But I feel like I prefer doing it in poetry events because it’s not saturated by the beat. So people can just take the lyrics in more, and hear what I’m saying, and get to slow it down because sometimes the patterns are quite intricate, so people just usually like the way it sounds on the beat but they’re not taking in what I’m saying, but when I go to poetry events, I appreciate them a bit more because they actually dissect what’s being said instead of how it’s being said.ADS: Do you see yourself being signed to High Focus as a landmark for women in UK hip hop?Oof, no pressure. I don’t really overlook it to be fair, it’s more just everyone else that’s saying, oh there’s girl been signed to High Focus, but I don’t really push it to the forefront. I’m just another artist on the roster and I wouldn’t want the pressure on my back of carrying a whole gender. Obviously I’m aware of what gender I am, but it’s not me that pushes it to the forefront. I obviously am gonna give the girls a voice because I’m speaking from a woman’s perspective but no pressure.