A minor stir was caused in the Aussie hip-hop community recently. Thomas Rock, member of Sydney veteran group Def Wish Cast, raised the spectre of racism infiltrating the local hip-hop scene during his interview on Triple J’s hip-hop show.
“I do a lot of youth workshops so I get around a fair bit. But in the last couple of years, and I’ve been doing these workshops for 10 now, I’ve been seeing a rising trend of young people taking on the name Australian hip hop but they are really latching on to the Australian part as something completely different than it’s intended. They’re forgetting the hip hop part. So they’re seeing the phrase Australian as a badge of white Australia and that’s very separate from everyone from my generation that saw hip hop as hip hop.
It’s a culture that’s universal, it’s global and it’s everyone. But these guys are saying no it’s just for white Australians. And I’m seeing it more and more to the point where it’s attracting people that have that lean towards the white pride and white power thing which has no place in hip hop whatsoever. Zero place.”
The Vine subsequently ran a story following up on this issue, while rising star Jimblah, an indigenous MC out of Adelaide, also raised it in a track recently released online.
Note that Thomas Rock speaks of it not as something that the artists themselves are promulgating, but something coming from a section of the punters. The extent to which he is right, and that racism really is a problem in the scene, is open for debate and will no doubt garner some widely different views. Indeed, you could argue that Australian hip-hop artists actually tend to be considerably more “progressive” in their views than American ones – they are generally coming from a less hostile environment and many are university educated. But as the various identities interviewed in The Vine all acknowledge, racism is a problem in Australian society in general and Aussie hip-hop is a part of that society. So it’s not surprising that these sort of attitudes exist in the scene; especially given that as a whole, hip-hop is a vehicle for sexist and violent anti-social attitudes like no other genre of music.
Yet hip-hop is also a special case. It arose from black American street culture in the late 70s and early 80s, and it still wears its ethnic origin on its sleeve. It has exposed both good and bad aspects of African-American life to the world like nothing else before it. New York City remains the epicentre of global hip-hop just as it was over 30 years ago. Unlike some other black forms of music that have become mainstream (jazz, blues, rock & roll), hip-hop is still mostly a black thing. So how do “white pride” and “white power” elements come to exist in an art form that is so intrinsically non-white at its core?
Those of us who are old enough to remember the heyday of hip-hop (roughly the late 80s to the mid-90s) remember a time when being a hip-hop fan meant you got at least a smattering of Black History 101. Sure, it was mostly about fashion and partying and attitude, as it is now. Yet even those guys who only liked the art form for its more abrasive aspects, like the gangsta rap genre pioneered by NWA, nonetheless got wise to the fact that a lot of black Americans lived in a place called “the ghetto” and for some reason weren’t too happy about it. Dig even just a little deeper, through the likes of KRS-One, Ice Cube and others, and the Australian rap fan was introduced to a genre of music that railed at racism, oppression and injustice, even if there were sometimes a few too many references to “bitches” thrown in there as well. Back then Flava Flav wasn’t just some sad washed-up clown on reality TV, but a member of Public Enemy, a group who somehow managed to assail the pop charts with militant black activism.
Like so many other aspects of US pop culture, young Australians started doing it too. But hip–hop was markedly different to rock and other styles of music that had taken off here, in that it was harder to separate from its source community. And as much as white Australian kids loved it, it just wasn’t about them. This is one reason that there has always been a huge ethnic fanbase for American urban music in Australia, as they related to it in a way that they often didn’t relate to the white-dominated world of rock. Aussie hip-hop was still doing its thing, a scene slowly developing beneath the surface, but the mainstream wasn’t really taking it seriously. Suburban Aussie kids aping African-American street culture just didn’t seem right.
So what changed? Obviously, there was an increase in the number of kids who had grown up being exposed to the art form, which thus led to more artists, more fans and more buzz. But there were other factors too. Hip-hop culture worldwide was intruding more and more into the mainstream; terms like “bling”, “pimpin’” (as an adjective), “playa” and “wack” had entered common parlance, and by the late 90s every other hard rock band seemed to have either a rapper or a turntablist as part of their lineup. The Beastie Boys helped form a bridge between hip-hop culture and the white hipsters who normally only listened to indie rock. And then there came the rise of Eminem. Once the biggest star in the genre was a snotty white boy, it sent a message that hip-hop need no longer be just a black thing.
It also helped that at the time, hip-hop in the US was experiencing a downward slide in creativity from its glory days, even as it went from strength to strength in terms of global domination. Even though in the early-to-mid 90s artists like Nas, Big L, Wu-Tang Clan, and Notorious BIG released some of the greatest albums ever released in the genre, things gradually got worse after that. The “conscious” and Afrocentric rhymes of the early 90s had gone out of style. Gangsta and playa themes came to the fore, but turning them into music worth listening to was not something everyone had the aptitude for. At the same time, a great deal of US hip-hop was flirting too heavily with commercial pop, and the late 90s were dominated by Puff Daddy and the like.
From the early days of the Australian hip-hop scene, a lot of rappers had affected a kind of pseudo-American accent. But hip-hop is a genre that prizes “realness” more than any other, and gradually the broader Australian accent came to be not just accepted, but valued as a marker of the local scene growing up and standing on its own feet. Gradually radio stations like JJJ came to aggressively promote Australian hip-hop in the same way they had championed local rock music. It was sold as something that Aussies could relate to, and was arising from a living, breathing scene that we could feel part of if we wanted to. Even if the music that emanated from overseas was better, that was no longer the main consideration.
The growth of the scene and its JJJ-led push into the mainstream meant that local acts were competing with rock and pop artists in the charts. Adelaide trio Hilltop Hoods can arguably be called the biggest band in Australia right now, with 3 consecutive releases topping the albums chart. Both Drapht and Bliss N Esso have had albums debut at number 1, while The Herd and 360 have also struck the top 10. It’s notable that most prominent Australian artists have stuck to a more old-skool sound that reflects hip-hop’s golden age, by using old funk-based drum loops and organic-sounding samples. By contrast, the American hip-hop that charts here often has commercial pop, R&B and dance elements and a shinier, synth-based sound, while the lyrics seldom go beyond “I’ve got a lot of money” and “I see you shake that ass in the cluuub, girl.” But those US hip-hop artists who eschewed the mainstream and stuck to the more old-skool approved methods didn’t really get played here; commercial stations only wanted Flo-Rida and Pitbull, while JJJ’s hip-hop quota has been primarily local.
Thus it is not so difficult to see why there are many in the new generation of hip-hop fans who legitimately believe that Australian hip-hop is better than its American counterpart. Aussie hip-hop has long shown a need to exalt in itself; in its early days it had to fight for its patch, and prove that it was more than just a poor imitation of what was being created overseas. For its own survival it needed to push Australian identity as not a drawback but a selling point. But there has also been a confluence of this kind of Aussie pride with the uglier strains of Aussie pride that exist in the community. Perhaps this is inevitable as the growth in local hip-hop’s popularity has attracted a lot of people who would be generally termed bogans. The genre’s increased celebration of Aussie-ness combined with hip-hop’s innate appeal to teenage rebellion makes for the perfect bogan attractant. This new bogan section of Aussie hip-hop fandom has not really grown up with a connection to hip-hop’s better days and its African-American roots.
And thus the nature of Australian hip-hop has evolved to a point where xenophobia and “white pride” sentiments can creep into elements of the fanbase. I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise. Rock & roll was “jungle music” in the mid-50s, but within 20 years had become strictly the domain of white men. And while the majority of local hip-hop artists espouse progressive social values, a great many fans connect less with those messages and more with the sound and emotions that power it. I’m not suggesting that the proportion of fans who echo white nationalist-type sentiments is any more than a minority. But nonetheless, this may be the beginning of a trend that sees people of colour somewhat left out in the cold in a genre that originally was all about people of colour.
Hi ES
I think you raise some interesting points, but I think you’re missing what Jimblah, as a rising star in hip-hop, could be said to represent.
When you talk about the huge ethnic fanbase for American urban music in Australia, you may be overlooking the natural result of this demographic – that surely this ethnic fanbase is going to lead to ethnic MCs? And hasn’t this already started? Black hip-hop artists like Jimblah, Briggs (Indigenous), One Sixth, Diafrix (African) are the non-white Australian fans coming of age with their own music.
So when you say that “this [racism] may be the beginning of a trend that sees people of colour somewhat left out in the cold in a genre that originally was all about people of colour” aren’t you ignoring the fact that people of colour are carving their own space in this genre? Given Diafrix is modestly successful already, I really think there’s a good future here. If the next generation of great hip-hop is more ethnic than the generation before it, I’m not really sure why ethnics would be left out in the cold.
@ Lewis:
From my limited exposure to Jimblah, I think he’s one of the best MCs ever produced in this country. Will he ever blow up anywhere near the extent of Hilltop Hoods and the like? I doubt it.
And I’ve actually known Diafrix since they first started out; had a few mutual friends with Momo and we used to have a few jams together. An interesting question is why Diafrix are only “modestly successful” while others are becoming huge?
I actually think that Diafrix would have done better had they emerged before “skip-hop” became a big thing. Back then, there wasn’t so much emphasis on being “Aussie”. Today, I’m not sure if the the bulk of the Oz hip-hop fanbase can relate to them. When they first appeared I thought they would succeed, as a sort of bridge between black American hip-hop and the local scene, but now I wonder if they are missing out on an audience because they are neither one thing or the other. The same goes for RuCL, a Jamaican-Australian MC from Melbourne who I thought was gonna be huge but has kinda dropped off the radar now.
ES, I can see what you mean, and I thought your article was a good read, but I still think you’re being overly pessimistic.
It’s interesting that Bliss n Eso is an extremely successful hip-hop group with an Arab member, but he’s always relegated to a background role, whereas Diafrix’s most popular MV on YouTube centres around a white guy. But whereas rock n roll developed a poster boy who starred in a pro-Confederacy film (i.e. Elvis), the Australian hip-hop scene hasn’t sunk to such lows – yet, anyway.
Will any Australian non-white hip-hop artist/s ever make it as big as Hilltop Hoods? As an Afro-Eurasian Australian, I’d love to say yes, but it seems unlikely. But surely it doesn’t need to have that level of commercial success to reach out to an ethnic audience?
The African American population outnumbers the entire population of Australia, African Australians make up about 1% of this country’s population. Indigenous Australians only number a bit more than twice that. I think it’s impractical to compare Jimblah or Diafrix’s success with the Hilltop Hoods. Perhaps this just reveals my low expectations, but I think Diafrix reaching a modest level of popularity is in-and-of-itself a success. I find it encouraging that artists from one of Australia’s tiniest minority groups can find some measure of broader success in a niche genre. I think that bodes well for future artists with similar backgrounds, and consequently for hip-hop fans who enjoy that kind of thing.
Elefant traks… If you are going to talk about making hip hop more diverse you have to mention them. They produce people like L-fresh the Lion, Jimblah, The last Kinection and a few more. They were formed by the herd, whose songs often feature elements of fighting racism and other political elements. Then there is urthboy and horrorshow who in 2015 teamed up with jimblah and Thelma plumb to protest about the treatment of adam goodes. Although some of these guys are white, like urthboy and horrorshow’s sulo they actively try and add diversity to their music. The recent urthboy song Second Heartbeat which features sampa the great, an african rapper based in sydney shows this.