Our Q&A With Rising So-Cal Artist Tempest

Whats up Tempest! We really enjoyed your latest mixtape “Unfiltered”. To start this interview, please let us know how did your Hip Hop career start? When and where?

It started when I wanted more for myself and the people around me. I’ve always loved music. And I started writing and show my friend, who’s my acting manager now, and he saw the potential and agreed I should really take it somewhere. And that was the beginning of it all.

Did any or your family members motivate you or was it friends and your inner circle?, when they found out you had great music talent.

It wasn’t really known to family yet that I was actually going to try and become a music artist. My manager, Edward, was the first to really know what I wanted to do. And how far I actually wanted to go with it. But when it came to light and they saw the potential they motivated me to strive for it completely.

Feel free to breakdown the creative process of the “Unfiltered” mixtape. (features, production, etc).

Unfiltered for my part was to more importantly show my growth over the years. But making it itself, it was a project I felt at a time in my life that was needed. As it goes people come into your life, some stay some go. The ones still here of course don’t mind being mentioned. The ones that go despise it. But I make music about my life and that’s just how it goes. Nothing is ever malicious. All in all the basic concept of Unfiltered was that I was gonna make these tracks the way I wanted to make them. Say what I wanted to say in them. Put them out there how I wanted to. But of course doing it the right way. And not in a negative way. But still sticking to the concept of it being unfiltered.

Who are you Hip Hop influences?

My biggest influence is Drake. Learned a lot and still learning from him through his work. And Lil Wayne and Kanye West are also big influences to my music career.

Any new music videos coming out to accommodate the “Unfiltered” mixtape?

We really want to put some out for people to get a visual of how I really intended the songs to be. To give them some sort of life. But we’ve become really strategic in how we release things and what to put time into. But we would love to make music videos for some of the more popular songs on the mixtape.

How often do you perform live and tour?

Actually my manager and I just talked about this. But we agreed on focusing more on the product itself. And making better quality of music to put out. I love performing. And when we get an opportunity to for something closer to where we reside, we take it. But I’ve had six shows so far throughout my career.

What is your opinion on collabing with other MCs, is it a good thing or bad thing for you as an indie artist?

For me, I don’t necessarily have a problem with collabing. Most of my projects it’s just me. Cause I’m working on making myself an better artist. I like doing features for sure. As to others getting on one of my songs. It’s always up in the air for me. When I choose a feature I always make it so that feature can shine as well on my track. But how support goes nowadays and certain artist only look out for themselves just to push their career forward and not lifting everyone up, just to push you down, it gets frustrating wanting to collab. It’s good for networking and their fans would get to hear you and so on and so forth. It’s not necessarily a good or bad thing. But it has it’s pros and cons.

Here it is! Our most popular question! What is your definition of “underground hip hop”?

It’s whatever you want to make it. And how much you want to put into it. With music or anything you do in life it’s always whatever you wanna make it. And it’s always it’ll take you as far as you want to take it. So what I put into everything I do, I just want it to be enjoyable. I love what I do and I have fun doing it. It’s the life I’m glad I’ve chosen.

Where can people find you on the web? Drop all the vital links.

http://tempesthb.bandcamp.com/album/prologue

That link is to all my mixtapes I’ve done to date. Can definitely see the progression through those

https://m.soundcloud.com/hbforever-1

That link is to some tracks I’ve made over the years and a couple EPs

Lastly, and shout out?

A special shoutout to HB. They’ve been holding it down for me over the past few years. I just wanna thank them for their support and to let them know the best is yet to come. I wanna thank my family for their support and for believing in me and not just bigging me up. Thank you to you guys for the review and sharing my music. And last but not least to the people who pay attention and are listening to my music. I thank you all for your support and it will come full force and show with how far we will get. Once again I thank you all.