Movin' Up From Down Under Loud.com Blog #3

Week #3: Get Your Hate On

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So last week we were in love with the internet. Now it’s time to get our hate on a lil bit. It’s healthy, really. And I wouldn’t call it ‘hate’ per se. ‘Hate’ is a strong word. I’ll call it ‘the truth’.

Aight, we have a gang of reasons that we’re aiming to crack the North American market, as a priority over our homeland. The population is one. Australia has 22 odd million folks; the USA and Canada has pushing 400 million heads. You do the math. Also, the US is the home of Hip Hop; it’s ingrained in your culture. In 2008, folks of most age groups, genders, cultures, backgrounds, professions, sexual persuasions, whatever, feel Hip Hop, listen to it, and better yet, understand it. That’s the key; the average Aussie still views Hip Hop as a violent, foreign, and unrelatable culture from the other side of the world. So essentially, y’all have a market for it. And yes, we realise that with so many people and music being so easily produced and released these days, the competition is greater than ever. I still reckon there’s a better chance of making some noise over there than Down Under.

Now, seeing as the US created Hip Hop, why on earth would Americans (and Canadians for that matter) be interested in Australian Hip Hop artists? Well, that’s what we thought; until we started getting more interest from that side of the planet than at home. And as this continued, we started to pursue it as oppose to just take it as it comes (no homo).

The Australian scene is mad young in comparison. Our good friend, Canadian MC Eternia, told us once that she felt that Australia (Melbourne in particular) reminds her of Toronto or New York twenty years ago, in the sense that we still have the ‘purist’ attitude out here; artists generally haven’t been warped by the corporate machines. In Melbourne, there’s a strong graffiti community, regular b-boy, DJ and MC battles, and most folks do it for the love as opposed to legitimately making a career out of rap; they don’t think it’s possible. And for the most part, they’re right. Whenever a Hip Hop act does a show in Melbourne, it’s almost a guarantee that the majority of the crowd will be staunch, screwfaced MC’s. Well, that’s our experience, anyway, and that of a lot of our mates in the scene. It’s not the best atmosphere to rock a show in. We found the same thing in Toronto, actually, hence the name coined by Theo 3, ‘The Screwface Capital’.

One striking difference we found from dealing with cats in the US and Canada is the overwhelming willingness that people had to help us out. It blew our minds, both before we left and moreso when we got there. Not one meeting went by without that person putting us in touch with someone else that they felt could be beneficial to our trip. It was amazing. The thing is that you would rarely find that sort of attitude in Australia – most folks here are out for themselves. And maybe we only were looked after as we were foreigners and not so much of a threat. But at home, nobody does shit for nobody, particularly within Hip Hop. I believe it’s due to a belief that the ‘pie’, so to speak, isn’t big enough to go around, so people protect what they have.

Whatever the reasons, our experiences with North Americans have been incredibly positive, and we are inspired more than ever to keep at it.

Plug of the week: Wake Your Daughter Up! Blog did a lil write up on us for our trip, so have a bit of a read:

Cee & Bekah interview (link to: http://www.wydublog.com/2008/09/new-artist-spotlight-cee-bekah.html)
Notion interview (link to: http://www.wydublog.com/2008/09/new-artist-spotlight-notion.html)

So until next time, stay real, stay raw, stay rugged, stay grimey. It’s the only way.

Blessings,
Cee.
The Movement Fam.