At A Glance

Format: One MC, Dj with tracks or Live Band

Genre: Hip-Hop, Rap, Jazz, Soul, Experimental

Performance Length: 30min, 40min

Ideal Venues: Performance Art Centers, Music Festivals, Listening Rooms, Clubs, Universities, alternate art spaces

Available for: Concerts, Festivals, Panel Discussions, Artists Residencies, Educational Engagements

Themes: Black American Art, Community, Identity, media, power, Storytelling

American Bullshit is a multidisciplinary performance and recording project from Tennishu that examines the tension between the promises of America and the realities experienced by those living within it. Blending hip-hop, jazz, soul, experimental music, and live improvisation, the project challenges audiences to confront the contradictions, complexities, and cultural narratives that shape contemporary American life. Rather than offering simple answers, American Bullshitcreates space for reflection, dialogue, and critical thought through uncompromising artistic expression.

Born from years of observation, performance, and lived experience, the project explores themes of identity, race, power, economics, media, ambition, and the commercialization of culture. It asks what is celebrated, what is ignored, and who ultimately benefits from the stories a society chooses to tell. These questions are woven throughout the music—not as lectures, but as invitations for listeners to engage with ideas that are often uncomfortable, deeply personal, and profoundly relevant.

Musically, American Bullshit refuses to be confined by genre. Original hip-hop production exists alongside jazz improvisation, soulful harmony, cinematic textures, and experimental sound design. Live instrumentation and spontaneous performance play an essential role in bringing the music to life, creating concerts that evolve from night to night while remaining grounded in rhythm, storytelling, and emotional honesty. The result is a performance that feels equally at home in a listening room, a theater, a festival, or an alternative arts space.

At its core, American Bullshit is an exploration of contradiction. It recognizes that beauty and injustice, hope and disappointment, progress and resistance often exist simultaneously. Rather than reducing those tensions to slogans or easy conclusions, the project embraces complexity, asking audiences to consider how art can reveal truths that are difficult to express through conversation alone.

Like all of Tennishu’s work, American Bullshit is rooted in the enduring tradition of Black American creativity—drawing inspiration from generations of artists who have used music as a means of documenting their time, challenging convention, and imagining new possibilities. It honors that lineage while speaking in a distinctly contemporary voice, combining modern production with improvisation and performance to create an experience that is immediate, provocative, and deeply human.

Whether encountered as a live performance, a vinyl record, or a recorded album, American Bullshit is designed to leave listeners with more than memorable songs. It invites them to ask questions, reconsider assumptions, and engage more deeply with the world around them. It is a work that values honesty over certainty, curiosity over comfort, and conversation over conclusion—an ongoing artistic examination of America through the lens of sound, story, and lived experience.