In Conversation: Truemendous
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Music
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IN CONVERSATION: TRUEMENDOUS
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Words by Ashe De SousaArtwork by Tom Shotton
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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.
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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?
Yeah, 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.
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"THE BEST MUSICIANS I KNOW ARE FROM BIRMINGHAM BUT IT JUST LACKS INFRASTRUCTURE IN MY OPINION."
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ADS: How did growing up in Birmingham affect your music?
T: It didn’t affect my sound but it did affect my musical journey. Because the city presented so many open mic nights and poetry nights it was easy to get into a routine of performing, building a brand, but only up to a certain point. You can only do so much in Birmingham before you are just doing the same thing over and over again. I went to Atlanta with my friend and we were just exposed to a different calibre of poets and artists, so coming back to Birmingham and what I was used to, it was sad man, you’re exposed to so much more. The best musicians I know are from Birmingham but it just lacks infrastructure in my opinion. I moved to London two years ago and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made man, I can’t complain.
ADS: What music did you grow up around?
T: My mum used to listen to a lot of RnB bands, 90s RnB, I was maybe a bit too young but Escape, Dru Hill. I don’t think I understood rap when I was younger to be honest and I didn’t like the deliverance of rap either, even to this day I would rather listen to a bunch of singers than a bunch of rappers. I just appreciate vocalists more than I do rappers. It’s a bit weird but I just take it in better. I can only listen to rap for so long but I can listen to RnB and neo-soul for the rest of my life.
ADS: I feel a lot of 90s and 00s nostalgia in your lyrics and visuals, references to Jimmy Neutron, Power-Puff Girls, Yu-Gi-Oh and Crash Bandicoot. Where does that come from?
T: I like intertwining humour into a lot of my verses, even when the topic is very serious. I kinda know the formula as to what people will laugh at, what people will cringe at, what people will feel uncomfortable with so I like incorporating random things to get a reaction sometimes. It’s for people to relate and sometimes it’s more just a strategic thing to connect to whoever’s listening to the song. I sometimes do it with different characters, different cultures, it’s just something to help me writing because it keeps me engaged whilst writing the verse as well.
ADS: There’s a straitjacket that crops up as a kind of visual motif in a lot of your videos - what does it represent?
T: You know a lot of artists have alternative personalities and characters and stuff, I think I’m gonna embody that. There’s one character in a straitjacket and one in a hospital gown with a bear. It’s kinda just playing on being labeled crazy - labelling myself as crazy before someone else does whether it be because they don’t understand why I rhyme the way I do, why I talk about what I talk about, or they don’t understand my visuals, because everything’s a bit weird. I’m labelling myself as crazy before you do. And then it also doubles with music being the reason I become crazy, not so much the music itself but the business side of it, when certain elements come into it, it fucks you up man.
Yeh, it’s frustrating when you’re forced to play both parts, musician and businesswoman.
Yeh, it’s playing on losing your sanity as a musician as well. It’s just me highlighting it before it happens. So it’s a double meaning, me with my style of rap and visuals and production, but also losing your sanity because of music. And it’s just sick visually. You’ll be seeing a lot more of that character.
ADS: How are you half Action Man, half Barbie?
T: Half Action Man Half Barbie plays on people that possess feminine and masculine traits, so not just being 100% girlie girl and not being 100% masculine dude, because a lot of us are a bit of both. It’s playing on the embodiment, embracing both traits, that it’s okay to have both implemented into you. Obviously, aesthetically I’m not the most feminine girl out there which is fine, most of us aren’t, but I’m still a woman. It’s just embodying it, the way you move and the decisions you make. You don’t have to be one or the other.
ADS: What’s the first thing you thing of when I say home?
T: Peace. Tranquility. Being welcomed, fulfillment, love, family, But yeah peace is the first thing.
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CONTEMPORARY CONVERSATIONS
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