Teremoana

Rip It Up, Issue 220, 1 December 1995, Page 18

Teremoana

Looking After niuimep uno

teTeremona’s second single, ‘Four Women’, hits the streets for public consumption, the one-time voice behind Upper Hutt Posse and Moana and the Moahunters is approaching her burgeoning solo career with gusto. Teremona Rapley first began flexing her vocal chords in public in 1987, as a member of famed Wellington rap outfit Upper Hutt Posse. The band pulled up roots to settle in Auckland two years later, immediately after the release of their debut, Against The Flow. Though mostly in the background on the recording, Teremona’s hefty soul voice could be heard in full flight on ‘Stormy Weather’, one of the album’s highlights that suggested better things were to come.

By the turn of the decade, Teremoana was a card-carrying member of Moana’s Moahunters, and was performing regularly live, and in the studio, with other local dance/hip-hop crews such as Unitone Hi-Fi, and MC OJ & Rhythm Slave. Despite a Most Promising Female Vocalist Award, picked up in 1991, and a steady stream of self-esteem boosting reviews, Teremoana chose to stayed shielded from the full glare of the stage lights until midway through this year, when she finally made a clean break from the Moahunters. Teremoana says the decision to step front and centre wasn’t taken lightly, but made once she realised she had the full confidence to do it. “Back in the early days, my mind was still being moulded and shaped into whatever it is now. That’s eight years of being behind people, and though it’s not so much being oppressed, it’s people telling you what to do, what to think when you’re on stage, what to think when you’re doing an interview. I couldn’t see how I could develop my own personality with these people still around me. It was about recognising a confidence in myself to know I could do it by myself. I pissed a lot of people off, but it’s okay, they’re still my

friends, there’s no hard feelings." A cover of Nina Simone’s ‘Four Women’ is the follow-up to Teremoana’s first solo single, ‘Beautiful People’, launched last April. Recorded at York St, ‘Four Women’ is an overtly sophisticated slice of languid-soul heaven. “I just love singing that song, apart from the fact I can relate to it in many ways, it’s good for me to sing it. [Laughter] It wasn’t till I put the song down that I thought: ‘Shit! I put skin colour in it again.’ People just turn off as soon as they hear ‘black’, ‘brown’, or ‘yellow’. I don’t have a problem saying it, in fact, I like being black! It’s never been a bad thing to point out skin colour, people are always doing it with their eyes, but for them to say it with their mouths is like a freaky experience.” All activity now is focussed on the recording of Teremoana’s debut album, pencilled in to take place in January. She plans to work with a variety of people, including Danny D of Dam Native and DJ/producer DLT.

“Because I’m into all sorts of different types of music, I don’t want to be held down to having everything sound the same. I'd rather have the option of working with different people.” While Teremoana is very definitely not the type of artist who’ll let herself be assembled in the mind’s eye of some svengali producer, she doesn’t anticipate any problems dealing with overblown male egos in the studio. “With my stuff, as long as the communication is there between the producer and artist, you can’t really go wrong. Now I know what I want, and there’s a full-on vision for this album. On my album it’s all knowledge of self, and I’ll take you on wicked tangents. I don’t so much fuck with your mind, I play with your mind and make you think."

JOHN RUSSELL