Tr­ish­es is a project by Trinida­di­an na­tive Tr­ish Ho­sein, cre­at­ed to ex­press Freud's con­structs of self (the pri­mal, con­scious and spir­i­tu­al) through spo­ken word, live loop­ing and vo­cal ef­fects. Her un­de­ni­ably orig­i­nal song­writ­ing, fleshed out by hip-hop beats and pop hooks, ex­am­ines hu­man strug­gle through an an­thro­po­log­i­cal lens.

Ho­sein be­gan tour­ing the U.S. and abroad af­ter grad­u­at­ing from the Berklee Col­lege of Mu­sic, and has opened for acts like Dami­an Mar­ley, Vic Men­sa, K. Flay, Neon Hitch and Gavin Turek. Her dy­nam­ic live show awes au­di­ences as Ho­sein takes them in­to her mu­se­um-like mind and cre­ates a son­ic blan­ket with her unique sound. Af­ter see­ing Ho­sein per­form Marie Claire, Al­lure and Cos­mopoli­tan writer Shye­ma Azam called it "En­chant­i­ng," con­tin­u­ing, "It wasn't hard to see that this one woman show was su­per tal­ent­ed, mak­ing her own mu­sic and ex­pert­ly lay­er­ing her voice over catchy tunes as she went along."

Ho­sein's up­com­ing al­bum "Ego" fo­cus­es on the en­ti­ties that de­fine hu­man­i­ty while ad­dress­ing the cur­rent cul­tur­al and po­lit­i­cal cli­mate. Each fo­cus track on the al­bum will be aid­ed by art col­lec­tions and per­son­al es­says. When not work­ing on mu­sic, Ho­sein helps re­set­tle refugees in the Los An­ge­les area, vol­un­teers with Rock n Roll Camp for Girls, and is on the board of the El­der En­ter­tain­ment Or­ga­ni­za­tion. She is al­so a brand am­bas­sador for Amer­i­can Ex­press and Dis­cov­er LA.

What in­spired the track Hy­dra?

I wrote Hy­dra as a re­sponse to ris­ing white na­tion­al­ism in the U.S., par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter the Un ite the Right Ral­ly in Char­lottesville last year. When Heather Hey­er was mur­dered dur­ing a counter protest, I re­mem­ber watch­ing her moth­er speak at her memo­r­i­al and feel­ing a sense of hope. I knew that her death wasn’t in vain be­cause next time even more peo­ple would show up in her place be­cause of her. It re­mind­ed me of the Greek myth of the hy­dra - a crea­ture who would grow two heads when­ev­er one got cut off.

Tell us about the EP 'EGO'. What should we ex­pect?

EGO ex­plores the things hu­mans have con­struct­ed to sep­a­rate our­selves from our pri­mal dri­ves, but fail us be­cause we haven’t been able to ful­ly reach our spir­i­tu­al selves yet. Things like gov­ern­ment and mon­ey. The idea be­hind gov­ern­ment is great. It’s no­ble. But every gov­ern­ment fails its peo­ple in some way and is cor­rupt in some oth­er way be­cause peo­ple aren’t per­fect. Same with mon­ey. With­out mon­ey we wouldn’t have been able to make sig­nif­i­cant so­cial and sci­en­tif­ic ad­vances. We would still be stock­ing up bushels of corn to trade for wool and stuff like that. But mon­ey al­so makes it pos­si­ble for one man to have more prop­er­ty and wealth than he could ever use or need, while an­oth­er man is beg­ging me to buy him chick­en nuggets on Hol­ly­wood Boule­vard. It’s re­al­ly bizarre.

So EGO ex­plores mon­ey, gov­ern­ment, lan­guage, self aware­ness and cre­ativ­i­ty and does it with songs, mu­sic videos, spo­ken word pieces and small art col­lec­tions.

How long have been on the mu­sic scene?

I’ve been work­ing on TR­ISH­ES for five years now but I think on­ly start­ed nar­row­ing in on what I re­al­ly want­ed to do and say about two years ago. I’ve been tour­ing pret­ty con­sis­tent­ly the past cou­ple years as well and my live show has re­al­ly felt like my strength up un­til now.

Tell us about some oth­er songs specif­i­cal­ly.

Well we talked a lit­tle bit about “Mon­ey” and “Cae­sar” which are about mon­ey and gov­ern­ment. I’m al­so re­al­ly ex­cit­ed about a song called Lan­guage. I think that it’s prob­a­bly the most beau­ti­ful thing I’ve ever writ­ten. I love words. I love writ­ing. But lan­guage can on­ly be so ac­cu­rate. It can on­ly de­scribe emo­tions and ex­pe­ri­ences to a de­gree. It’s al­so amaz­ing how much we can com­mu­ni­cate with­out a shared lan­guage and I think that’s re­al­ly beau­ti­ful as well.

I’m es­pe­cial­ly ex­cit­ed about Lan­guage be­cause we’re go­ing to meet sev­er­al im­por­tant peo­ple in my life who are al­so im­mi­grants and who grew up speak­ing in a dif­fer­ent tongue. We’ll meet DREAM­ERS and refugees and cloth­ing de­sign­ers and mu­sic man­agers. It’s go­ing to be re­al­ly per­son­al and re­al­ly fun for me to show off my team and my friends.

How po­lit­i­cal­ly com­mit­ted are you?

I’m very com­mit­ted to the equal­i­ty of black and brown Amer­i­cans and to the well be­ing of im­mi­grants in Amer­i­ca. I’ve been deeply dis­turbed by the treat­ment of peo­ple of col­or by law en­force­ment and with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

What am­bi­tions do you still have?

So many! In the past year I’ve start­ed div­ing more in­to the vi­su­al as­pects of my art. I’ve start­ed draw­ing and I want to get bet­ter at that. I’ve start­ed di­rect­ing and edit­ing videos and I’m ex­cit­ed to keep work­ing at that too.

I re­al­ly want to play more fes­ti­vals - par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­na­tion­al ones. I want to give a TED talk. I’m not sure about what yet. I think I’ll get my as­so­ciates de­gree in an­thro­pol­o­gy be­cause I like tak­ing an­thro­pol­o­gy class­es in my free time.

What is the great­est achieve­ment thus far for you?

I’m re­al­ly proud of my per­son­al growth and I think my great­est achieve­ment has been learn­ing to love and val­ue peo­ple for their sheer ex­is­tence. Learn­ing to be hap­py for peo­ple. Learn­ing to pull my­self away from jeal­ousy or anger or neg­a­tiv­i­ty. My friends say I’m a lot more ten­der than I used to be and I’m proud of that.

What is you cre­ative process like?

My whole project is con­cept based so every­thing stems from the core con­cept. My name is Tr­ish so the project is called TR­ISH­ES to rep­re­sent the Freudi­an con­structs of self: the id (the pri­mal self), the ego (the con­scious self) and the super­ego (the spir­i­tu­al self). I de­cid­ed to start with the con­scious self be­cause this is the self we are the most in touch with.

When be­gin­ning to write for “EGO” the first step was fig­ur­ing out which hu­man struc­tures I want­ed to fo­cus on. The de­ci­sion was based on an amal­ga­ma­tion of cur­rent events, my per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence and hu­man his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy. Once I de­cid­ed on the five ideas I spent a lot of time med­i­tat­ing on them. Watch­ing doc­u­men­taries and read­ing ar­ti­cles. Then I start writ­ing es­says and those es­says some­times morph in­to spo­ken word pieces, and at some point in­to songs. Af­ter I write the songs then I be­gin think­ing of how those songs and ideas should be rep­re­sent­ed vi­su­al­ly.