Bishop Nehru is a prodigal young rapper and producer from Rockland County, New York. His final UK tour date this year was in our fair city of outlaws, Nottingham. We got the chance to have a quick catch up with the MF DOOM protégé at The Bodega…
Nottingham is the last stop of your tour. How did it compare to the other cities?
It’s been cool, definitely one of the top vibes out of all the cities on this tour. They were jumping around and feeling the energy.
You’ve got quite a few styles of music, out of all your styles did any one style get a better reception in the UK than others?
Sort of, it depends what the fans were looking for ... they gave different vibes off. If I was looking for more conscious stuff and lyricism, I’d do Game of Life or one of the acapella freestyles. But if the vibe is more on a turn-up perspective and the people are jumping around and going crazy then I’d do something like Emperor or Feel the Wrath, and maybe some new stuff that I haven’t released yet.
You’ve worked with a few different producers, how does it compare working with each of them (DOOM, Kaytranada etc)?
Honestly? I feel like I approach music from different producers in the same way. I don’t want to say that I vibe the same with every producer but the way that I take in the beat to get the lyrics out is like the same for each beat. I try not to overthink it too much. That’s one thing that I learned from DOOM is to not overthink it too much, that’s how you get writers block. Keep going and if you don’t like it afterwards then go back.
You were working on a project with Nas not too long back, what’s the deal with that?
It wasn’t really a collaborative project, he was going to executive produce a project I was putting out. I’d see Nas now and then in the studio or at dinner. We’d chill and whatever but he wasn’t in the studio with me making it, he was more an overseer afterwards to make sure everything was cool. What ended up happening was more to do with creative differences with the other people and A&Rs at MassAppeal. I knew where I wanted to go with my music and they felt like they knew what direction they wanted the project to go in, so it was just creative differences.
What’s next for you then? Anything in the pipeline?
I’m always working on new music. Right now I’m working on an EP with a few different producers and one that I’m going to have a hand in production on. That’s it really, working on a bunch of different sounds. I actually produced before I started rapping and some of the tracks I performed tonight were produced by me. I’ve been asking people everywhere on the tour how they think things sounded. Sometimes I’ll make a beat and if it’s fire I’ll write to it straight away, but sometimes if you sit too close to the speaker it doesn’t sound the way you think it sounds, so you have to step away from it then go back to it again later.
I’ve got like over a thousand-and-something beats of all different types of vibes, I produce R&B shit as well as Chainsmokers type stuff. I don’t consider myself to be a Hip-Hop producer, I look at myself more as a musician and see things from a music theory perspective.
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