Shameless Self Promotion Time!! Well, not really but in a sense yeah.
If you read my ‘Return of 4eva’ Post, you may have noticed that I wrote that I’m in a rap group called Bullet to Knowhere and that I go by the alias ‘TonyG’ Well today I figured I would give everybody a little back story of how it all came together, where we’re headed etc.
WHY AND WHEN DID I START RAPPING:
First and Foremost is the back story and I’ll keep it as brief as possible. I first started rapping around age 13 and it was mostly because it was the cool thing to do at the time(you know back before everyone and their mama swore they were going to be the next big thing to blow) I didn’t take it too seriously at the time. Mostly I would just find instrumentals on Kazaa(anybody remember that site?) and freestyle with my friends.
Eventually I started writing rhymes because I thought I was pretty good, and for my age, I probably was. At first I wanted to be a Christian rapper, maybe not as a career choice, but I definitely spent a good amount of my time scrawling raps about God, sin, and the devil. I actually did my first(so far only) performances at my home church, which admittedly, is far from the most original back story of an entertainer.
The Origin Of BulletToKnowhere:
Fast forward a few years and I’m working at The Fresh Market and going to BCC full time. I had put the pencil down for a little while except to do a little parody work here and there in my senior year. I want to say I stopped writing around age 16 and got into it again right before I turned 18. By the time I started rapping again my subject matter had changed from gospel rap but it wasn’t a stark contrast by any means. I would just rap about real life. Things that were going on, funny situations,girls,etc. Essentially it was just me being me on paper.
During this time I became good friends with Asim, who some may know as iSeemBlack if you follow me musically. We both realized we had a love for rapping and decided (although it took forever to figure out our group name) to start our own two man rap group. 2009 Bullet to Knowhere arrived.
And that was about it for almost a year lol. Not exaggerating. Between our school responsibilities, life’s demands, and work schedules our first mixtape didn’t drop until a little over a year after we released that first video, we even released a comeback video before the actual mixtape dropped.
D/L Link:http://limelinx.com/files/43951ca2d7679bec3a95ef6824cc94fb
Initial Feedback:
The response to our first tape ever was better than I expected it to be and I was confident that things would slowly start to build in our favor. And honestly i feel like if we had continued to build off of the momentum of that tape then our situation would be somewhat different then what it is currently.
Needless to say we dropped the ball musically when we both put our attention back into school/work/life etc. a good 3-4 months passed by of just ( admittedly Bare) online promotion for the one bit of material we had out and not too surprisingly the mild interest we’d built for ourselves decreased steadily.
I’d still been writing at that point but recorded nothing, and after listening to Procrastinators Anonymous so many times I had developed into a perfectionist of sorts and began to dislike most of my old work. The beat selection, the rhyme scheme, so on and so forth.
Shortening the story again, this mindset is essentially what kick started the follow up project, The “Simply Entertainment” Series. In a nutshell Simply Entertainment was a way for Asim and I to musically ‘Address’ our own critiques with our personal deliveries on our last project while simultaneously providing listeners with some well overdue fresh music.
My half of Simply Entertainment dropped in April of this year. iSeem’s half and the group collective half is still in an artistic limbo of sorts with no estimated release date at the time of this post.
D/L Link:http://limelinx.com/files/109579e552d3cc545c8bf072d3bbe320
Current State of Affairs:
So after this compressed story of how everything came to be, the question can only be what is the status of the present and also for the possible future? Here’s what I know for sure.
1) Right Now iSeemBlack and I aren’t in the same place creatively- Now I’m not insinuating that we’re arguing or in any disagreement of any kind. We’re actually really cool with each other. HOWEVER, we do have different mindsets about our lives so to speak. I’m about to graduate college and hit the real world running. I don’t have to study, write papers or take tests ever again and that has already made a huge difference for me as far as a creative space is concerned. iSeem is still juggling school/life/and work which means…
2.) No one not even I know the next time you’re going to hear material from him and/or the both of us: This is just the reality of the situation. I can’t force him to make music though I’ve considered trying to in the past lol. I can’t say that the “Simply Entertainment” Project will ever be brought full circle or if we’ll drop the next project “He Man Women Hater’s Club” in the near future. A number of people have asked me about these projects and that’s the best answer I can give.
3) What this Means is: that for now I’m going solo in a sense. There was a point in time where I would refrain from writing,recording and releasing new material in order for Bullet to Knowhere to only release music as a group but as that is currently not an option I will be releasing new tracks, tapes, etc as I see fit. I enjoy making music and expressing myself too much to wait for a more convenient situation to arise. This decision came after much deliberation with myself because anybody who knows me will tell you that the last thing I wanted to do as a musician is go solo.
I hope that fans(new, old, and soon to be) of our music will understand why things had to be done this way. At the end of it all, I just want to live my life with no regrets knowing that I gave all of my interests my all. I hope the people who take interest in my music will be willing to grow with me as I continue to improve my skills and progress artistically.
