True Story

About Terrell. !! So welcome to my life.....(rellion Introduction There was a time, not that long ago, when hip-hop was about more than models, money and the headaches that come with fame. Back in the day, the music was about real-life struggle; about finding power when everyone was holding you back. It was about waking up with nothing and hustling just to live to see another day. Stories of life in the streets laid the foundation of the movement. Now it’s time to take it all the way back with Rellion, one of the most promising new artists to emerge from the Dirty South in years. Rellion became a local phenom with his first record, Tru Story, which chronicles his days grinding just to survive. His lyrical legitimacy was hard won. The story of Rellion’s youth reads like a modern American Tragedy of loss, drugs and redemption. “Washington County is small,” says Rellion of his hometown in rural Georgia. “But it wasn’t peaceful. Where I lived it was the regular ghetto with robbing stealing and drug dealing.” By the time Rellion was eight, his father, one of the most notorious drug dealers in the South, had been sent to prison for the second time. A few months later, Rellion’s mother, who had also fallen prey to drugs, was herself incarcerated. “My parents were locked up, then my uncles were too,” he recalls. “Crack had a major effect on my family, until all there was left was old folk and children. That’s when the responsibility of taking care of the family fell to me.” At the time, Rellion was 11 years old. Suddenly thrust into role of parent, protector and advocate for his younger brother, and ailing grandparents, Rellion had to make sure there was food on the table and the lights were kept on. Sometimes they weren’t so lucky. Too young to get a legit job, Rellion turned to the streets to feed his people. “The same thing that wiped out my family is what I turned to to put food on the table,” he says. “It made me feel awful. I had to bottle up my pain, and fight not to hate the world.” Rellion dropped out of school, but he refused to let his young brother follow the same path. “I would do anything to keep my little brother in school,” he recalls. “I couldn’t go to social services, because I knew they would take him away. So I was going to PTA meetings and helping with homework, filing out forms. I wasn’t hustling to get rich,” he adds. “I was hustling to feed my family. So when I was older and able to do better, I did. I got a job at Wendy’s.” By 16, Rellion was finding solace, alone in his room, listening to Tupac. “I came to find out we had so much in common,” he remembers. “When he said it was him against the world, I could relate. That’s how I felt all the time.” From that inspiration, Rellion’s own rhymes began to flow. On the autobiographical Tru Life he rhymes, Ain’t nobody give me nothing, so I had to grind for it / All I wanted was a chance and I had to grind for it. “Everybody was listening to it,” Rellion says of the response the song received. “Older people, younger people. Someone made a copy of it, and next thing I know everybody had a copy. People were coming up to me telling me I speak the truth. That’s what they started calling me: Rellion the Truth.” Go hard, Rellion’s newest track, could be an anthem for our troubled times. Over a hypnotic beat, Rellion rhymes about the streets that made him and the focus that sustained him: Wintertime we had no heat / my mom and pops on chain gangs / summertime no AC / Ain’t none a you all built as strong as me. “I write about real life,” says Rellion. “I write off of emotions. So if I’m feeling depressed I might write about how cold the world is. But I also write about females and how beautiful they are.” And sometimes, Rellion takes it to the dance floor, as he does with On Fire, a light-hearted club bangin’ ode to the ladies. She be acting bourgie but always in the trap spot, he rhymes playfully, over an infectious synth-laden beat designed to rock the club, the car and radio airwaves. In all of his many styles, Rellion’s music reflects his truth: pure, gritty and raw. And in that truth Rellion wants others to find inspiration. “ I know there are a lot of kids who don’t have anyone and I want to reach them,” he says. “I want to reach the people in the far corners of the world who have no guidance and who are following the wrong crowd and tell them, ‘You have your own mind to make your own decisions.’ I want to have the same impact on them that Tupac had on me one of the rising stars from middle georgia(rellion) truth) ...... im real!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!