Russ Hillier, A Slice of Splinter Faction

<p>Today we meet a nice slice of the splinter fraction! Russ Hillier, 34, based in Southampton, UK. he has played in bands for years, mostly guitar and some backing vocals. Music has always been a hobby and passion since his early teens, and a few years ago when his band split up. He wasn't ready to let the dream die. No longer with his bandmates, instead of forming another collective, he decided to take a solo route, which resulted in his transition over to hip-hop &amp; rap. He started making beats around 2014/15, a real mess of genres, really just a hobby and outlet for his creative side. Once he was starting to feel okay with his production chops, he wanted to start bringing in vocalists - but didn't have confidence in his instrumentals alone. So he started laying down my own vocals on them. It sounded horrible, but he really enjoyed the process, letting go of his inhibitions in the vocal booth (literally a closet under the stairs, nothing glam) and started getting heavily into poetry in lyrics, wordplay, humor - all the stuff that makes up good, solid bars. He was trash at this too! But the enjoyment and his ignorance at the time meant I loved it, so he carried on regardless. Fast forward a year or two, he found a community within the makinghiphop subreddit cypher, where rappers are invited to lay down a verse based on a set theme &amp; beat. This gave him a chance to get feedback on what he was doing. Things have changed over the years, but it felt like for the longest time he was one of the few UK frequenters of that competition. This gave him and edge in ways as his voice was very unique there, as most of the users seemed to be US-based. Maybe his shitty flows could be disguised as an accent thing, he dunno lol. But over the years, he made some solid connections, now he has done several collab projects, he's one of 4 pillars that make up the group "Nomadic Odyssey" and recently (since June 2021) he formed an offshoot of rappers from that community known as "Splinter Faction." Most of my time currently is