Mental Combat issue 839

I am one of those who cannot easily round up a year's events, music, happenings, let alone a month’s worth, so I’ll keep it local.

There was a time when 99% of people outside the culture were totally un-enthralled, disinterested or vehemently against any form of local hip hop taking any form of media attention, especially with one that…shock horror, used an Australian accent. Trust me, it has been like pushing shit uphill and it really has only just managed some form of attention via the meteoric bend in The Hilltop Hoods’ career with one song. Of course it took ten years for this bend to become quite pronounced, but the penetrating effect that they have created has hopefully been a wake-up call to the naysayers who wished we would all have gone away…Though truth be told, the gap between them and other local artists is immense.

The Herd and the Elefant Traks stable would have to be the only ones following the vanguard laid down by Obese and its artists. Locally it was a stellar year for Australian hip hop. Some of my faves included Def Wish Cast’s The Legacy Continues, 13th Son’s The Hero The Trickster, Low Budget’s Magnasound, Funkoars’ The Greatest Hits, Down Under Beats Crew’s Under Raps, Astronomy Class’ Exit Strategy, Mindfield’s This Way Up, Koolism’s New Old Ground, Delta’s The Lostralian, Muph and Plutonic’s Silence the Sirens and Overproof’s The High Life. We also saw some re-releases from Melbourne’s Nuff Said with Prowla’s 97 album Money Walks getting the full CD treatment. The year was rather lean in regards to compilations. Offhand I can only recall Airheads 2, plus a few promo ones like the Pure Bred giveaway and the double CD of Qld artists from the Butter Beats store.

The UK’s online store Suspect Packages opened up a section selling Aussie wax and CDs. Queensland producer M-Phazes was getting more attention overseas making beats for US artists until he grabbed Bliss n Eso’s album Day of the Dog and remixed it in its entirety for a re-release. Next Level Records called it a day after nine years in business to be replaced by Soul Clap.

Hospice probably created a world first by having the largest posse dominated album on the shelves with Visiting Hours. UK lads Mystro and Lotek can be found on every second Australian album of this year. Macromantics became the darling of Triple J and her songs even popped up on a TV series, while Def Wish
Cast broke out with a dynamic film clip and an amazing album, but were pretty
much criminally overlooked by the Js. So much so that it was left up to Maya Jupiter via her Monday night show to expose local talent nationwide. In a
city of four million plus, there’s still no decent weekly night to hear hip hop
or funk. Try explaining that to the umpteenth tourist who asks where a good
place is to hang and listen to good music.

The Clare was as good as it got, but at least there was always something on every week at either 77 William St, The Abercrombie, Bat and Ball etc. thanks to the likes of GPS, Shrekk, Rivals, Brane, Deva, Banga and others that showcased local artists on the mic. So that was encouraging and helped foster an environment for the dedicated to perfect their craft. MySpace has slowed down the kids who usually send demos, for now they are all just sending a link to their page to check out their beats and raps. Multiply that by 100 and it becomes a chore that I now find tiresome to undertake. Especially when a page is tricked up with so many stupid images and conflicting media files as to drive a person insane whilst navigating through the sensory overload.

It’s strange. The reason I initially became interested in hip hop was because it was underground and mysterious. Nowadays it is everything from enamel to make your toenails sparkle to exercise videos for kids to soft porn video clips full of fantastical looking mulattos. Been happening for awhile now, but it’s getting ridiculous when talent is pushed back and marketability is more important. So I’m going to continue to search out for the same type of stuff as I did when it was 1984. Mainstream rap shit bores the crap out of me so don’t even enter into a dialogue with me about it. I could care less. It wasn’t why I became interested in this culture in the first place.


BLAZE
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