MusicWarship

Because it’s kind of surprising. Australia has a hip-hop scene, but it’s made up predominantly of sans melanin geeks wearing over-sized jackets and spitting rhymes about barbeques, drinking beer, and the folly of conservative politics. And those rhymes are always delivered in an exaggerated Aussie accent, like Crocodile Dundee flowing over Scott Storch.

All the while, our brothers across the Tasman are consistently delivering top-notch hip-hop, with on-point West Coast production, huge hooks, and genuinely world-class rhymes. The first New Zealand rapper I heard was Scribe, a guy whose debut album went five times platinum in his home country. Those huge sales were justified too. Check out his first single:

MP3: Scribe - “Not Many” (from The Crusader, 2003).

In the first verse of a remix of Not Many, we’re introduced to Savage, a mountain of a man with habit of chewing gravel and spitting fire:

MP3: Scribe - “Not Many Feat. Savage (Remix)” from (The Crusader, 2003).

In 2005, Savage released an album of his own. Probably best known for the title track Moonshine (featuring a seemingly inexplicable cameo from a then-not-so-famous Akon), it’s the single Swing that gets my attention, with a silly but good hook and club banger beat:

MP3: Savage - “Swing” (from Moonshine, 2005).

Finally, Savage cameos on a 2007 track from Australian Idol supergroup The Young Divas (seriously, that’s what they’re called. Who were the ad wizards who came up with that one?). His surprising presence transforms a fairly reasonable, well-produced pop track into bizarrely addictive, slightly ridiculous pop gold:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 8:30 am and is filed under Australia, Pop, Rap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.