TERRY
TERRY is one of the very few artists around today who isn't genre bound, or scared to do anything outside of the box, he recognises the importance of feeling within music and the creation of art. "I never want to be known as a specific type of artist, like the angry guy or the emotional guy, music is all about feeling and we as human beings feel a wide range of emotions at various points in our lives. As an artist, I want to be able to explore and express all of these emotions freely and without being held to a specific sound or arrangement"
“When I make music, I put my focus on creating a world for people to live inside for the duration of the track / project. Music is a form of expression and for me it’s important to recreate the feeling I felt, when I was in the situation I’m writing about, so the listener can feel how I felt.”
Describe yourself in 3 words:
I am me.
When did you first know that you wanted to be an artist and what sparked the dream for you?
I started off by writing stories, I was like 9 years old telling everyone I would grow up to be an author. My dad pointed out to me how weird he found this, considering I wasn’t a fan of reading books at the time - though I did listen to a lot of music. I remember staying up at late hours of the night/early morning to catch Logan Sama’s Grime show on KISS FM. I would study everyone’s flow and think of ways I could do what these MC’s were doing, but in my own way. I wrote my first 8 bars when I was 11 years old, it was really 4 bars but when you add the words “and again” at the end, all you had to do was repeat it more aggressively.
We used to have cyphers in our school round the back of the PE block, and feeling the energy of everyone collectively just spitting their bars in a circle, was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before, and that was the moment when I knew all I wanted to do was make music.
If you could collaborate with anyone who would it be?
Craig David, I feel like he’s our version of Charlie Wilson, but he isn’t utilised enough in UK music. I think I’d be able to make something with him that he’s never made before.
What inspires you creatively as an artist?
Anything that pushes the envelope, I enjoy watching or listening to something unique / from a perspective that I hadn’t even considered. I get bored easily, so I can’t listen to the same sounds over and over. I don’t ever wanna make the same song twice. I enjoy originality, there are a lot of artists that sound exactly the same as others.
What was the writing process behind your latest single "Winning"?
​
I played this beat to Rageouz in the studio, and at the time I already had the first verse written. We thought it’d be dope if we went back2back. We’ve featured on songs together in the past and this was something we were yet to do. If your music is different from what’s popular, a lot of people will only acknowledge your talent once you have music out and you’re making waves, because they see it as proof that it works or that it’s good, and that it’s something that other people like. Even a lot of other artists won’t work with you unless you’re “poppin”. My advice to anyone would be, focus on making what you want to make and not caring about the opinions of others understanding that you’re on your own journey and believe in your own ideas. At the end of the day you will win, if not in the world then in yourself, for me - creativity is more of an internal process, and less about how it performs in the outside world.
You've previously said you focus on creating a world for people to live inside when listening to your music, what did you want your fans to take away from your latest single?
​
How it feels to win against all odds, whatever “winning” means to you, even if all you’ve ever experienced in life is losses. Just thinking about winning, and how you would feel if you did, can trick your brain into thinking you already have. This can be done with anything, in order to visualise your goals.
How I listen to music is, instead of listening from the outside in, I’ll put myself in the same scenario as the one the Artist is describing, and this allows me to feel, a lot more deeply how they were feeling when they wrote the song. I’m sure this is how a lot of people listen to music, and it allows them to gain a closer connection to the artist, especially when they can relate. I like to create visuals, whether it be official music videos or much shorter videos on my Instagram alongside some of my songs as I release, and this is mainly done, just to express the emotion I felt when I was writing the song. This is how I feel I can create a world for people to live in.
What do you hope to achieve in the next 5 years?
​
Honestly I just wanna make more music, perform and reach more and more people, I don’t care about awards or recognition if it isn’t from my listeners, peers or artists that I’m a fan of. No organisation can tell me whether or not my music is “good” because in music, numbers do lie, there are certain trends that I choose not to follow. There’s an artist you’ve never heard of, with a song on his laptop that you will probably never hear, that if you did, you might just say it was your favourite song ever. I’m happy just being that guy.
I want to keep on creating, I want to do things that no one has done before creatively, and continue to grow as an artist and as a human being.
What else can we expect from you this year?
I’ve got a few songs dropping from now until the end of the year, all in preparation for a project called “Higher” dropping early next year.
