An Interview With Tajinere (1/3) By Steve Rudd

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

Tajinere is an extraordinary Hip-Hop artist who is based in Hull. He's been writing songs from a young age and has recently set up his own record label in order to better promote his music, including his recent single release Ours Tonight. He not only dabbles in Hip-Hop, as there are plenty of other musical influences thrown into the artful mix from Soul, Pop and Rock quarters too. What's more, Tajinere is pretty much a one-man-band, as he writes all his own songs, sings, composes and plays all the music and produces his own tunes too.

Tajinere genuinely is a rare talent, and he can often be found performing in Hull - so look out! Here he chats to Steve Rudd about where he's coming from, and - more importantly - where he's going...

Hi Tajinere, how are you? Things are going really well thanks, it seems that spring has finally arrived, the sun is shining and I'm feeling really happy at the moment. So you have recently returned to Hull after some time away travelling?

Yeah that's right, I spent a year living in Queensland, Australia which was fantastic - I spent loads of time on palm-tree lined beaches and diving on the Great Barrier Reef and that. And since I left Oz, I've been travelling round the world, living in places such as Guatemala and California amongst others.

Since re-settling back in the city, you have been working hard on making music. How would you best describe the type of music you are producing? The catch-all words would be UK Hip Hop. I'm making new, exciting rap music, smatterings of soul, pop, rock and indie. I'm really into using live instruments as much as I can because I definitely think that using real instruments gives my sounds an edge as far as hip hop goes and that it makes it loads more interesting than, say, endlessly looping a James Brown sample.

My sound is actually quite complex and dense with loads going on sonically and I'm toying with the idea of putting out my tracks as instrumentals just because it's easier to appreciate how all the different part interlink without the vocals. Mind you, I mix it up as well - I've recently done a track called 37 Bars that is just me and a beatbox. It's hip-hop in its purest form with all the attention on the lyrics. That track is on my new E.P. which can be downloaded for free from my website, www.tajinere.com

Have you played many gigs in Hull and what excites you most about performing in a live situation? I've done a few, most recently I teamed up with another rapper called I.D. and we put on a show at the Adelphi that went down a storm and I've done the occasional Musician's night and Sunday Sesh as well. I love doing stuff live. I was reading an interview a while back with a Nottingham-based hip hop group and they were saying that they weren't really into performing live and saw it just as a necessary evil to get their stuff heard. Personally, I just don't understand that mentality.

The whole point of any music is the live performance, in my opinion. People can get much more of an idea of what you are about if they can see you performing and for me to see the reaction of the audience is fantastic.

Continued .... Next Page (2/3)

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