Victory in Tragedy, Tedashii’s ‘This Time Around’ Screams of Renewal

Reach Records artist Tedashii is trying to push the envelope of his creative abilities with the release of new EP, This Time Around, and Rapzilla spoke to him about the new direction.

The record dropped on March 4 and contains seven tracks; some of which are the most ambitious of Tedashii’s career.

“I wanted to push the envelope for everyone that would either come to know who I am or had already known,” he said. “I wanted people to get a glimpse of again, this new individual after everything I’ve gone through. Also, I wanted people to kind of hear what I enjoy. Every sound on there is a sound I personally enjoy in music. That’s what would fit in the telling of the story for this particular project.”

The EP follows up the deeply personal and widely acclaimed album, Below Paradise, which was birthed out of the pain of losing a child. Tedashii unleashed his raw emotion and was working on his own healing. This Time Around catches up with Tedashii a few years removed from tragedy and approaches his life with a new found purpose.

“It definitely is a picture of a next chapter. Not so much that I think I should distance myself or take this idea that I’ve moved on, it’s something else. It’s just a continuation of the new normal that I now live in,” the emcee said. “It’s a new place in life that I kind have come to. The music really is an expression of that new place where I say let me try to make that better if I can. That’s kind of the message of it behind it all.”

He said he wants to come from a place of faith and trust to say, “I believe in us enough that we can do better, that we can be better if given the effort if given the opportunity…”

Tedashii said he chose to display this message and his experimental musings as a precursor to a full-length project. He is essentially letting everyone get their feet wet in order to hear what is coming next. It’s what he calls his “new normal.”

“I’m working,” the rapper said, concerning another album. “The idea is to always have music.”

Many of these new songs feature bare-boned tracks with instruments, acoustic guitars, and Tedashii singing. Some are a little more trap-rap heavy. The scope ranges a bit for such a small sample size, which logistically would make for an interesting live performance. The emcee has already begun to give some thought to how a live setting would convey these songs.

“There’s some planning here and there. They will be different if that makes sense. How they will be performed will be very different from other music,” said Tedashii. “I think across the board the slower tempo songs have kinda slowly become accepted more by listeners and people across the board. So doing those songs are fine, it’s just how you position them and how you present them in the show. That will be the challenge at the end of the day whether or not I perform isn’t an issue because I think people are ready for that particular sound even from a Reach artist.”

While This Time Around represents a better place for Tedashii, creating it was not without its challenges. He said things were a bit chaotic at times as he just moved to Atlanta from Houston. His family was trying to get situated with school and they were getting to know the area. It always seemed distractions were popping up that made this writing process extremely slow. However, one of these distractions was a great one, a new baby, that took up he and his wife’s time. “Sometimes life would not let me go.”

He continued, “So it was a slower process than I wanted, but at the end of the day it lent itself to what should have been.”

With that, came the time and leeway to improve on previously done things. He was able to redo and tweak a lot, and really perfect areas of songs that he felt he grew better at.

“I think at the top of that list for me is just getting better. There’s always room for improvement, there’s a way to grow,” he said. “One of the things that I heard in music is, ‘projects aren’t finished, they’re just released’. So I could have sat with this and created more and done more and tweaked this and made it better.”

He thinks in the future this box of creativity he’s currently in will expand even more. Tedashii is thinking of ways to incorporate non-conventional hip-hop artists to enhance what he does. Some names he tossed around are MercyMe, Casting Crowns, and Anthony Hamilton.

His question to himself, “Can I for real achieve this, or am I thinking too far outside the box?” His answer, “Yes, I really think I can.”

Check out This Time Around here

Stay tuned for part two with Tedashii coming soon.

Justin Sarachik
Justin Sarachik
Justin is the Editor-in-Chief of Rapzilla.com. He has been a journalist for over a decade and has written or edited for Relevant, Christian Post, BREATHEcast, CCM, Broken Records Magazine, & more. He's written over 10,000 articles, done over 1,000 interviews, and is in post-production for documentaries on Danny "D-Boy" Rodriguez & Mario "Machete" Perez. He's the project manager of the upcoming video game Run the Court and of the media brand Crimefaces. Justin likes to work with indie artists to develop their brands & marketing strategies. Catch him interviewing artists on Survival of the Artist Podcast & creating videos on his social media channels.
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