Australian hip-hop is as polarising a genre of music as you could hope to come across in this country: it seems people either love it, or they hate it – indeed, there doesn’t seem to be much middle ground. Looking at the recent Triple J Hottest 100 of All Time, you’d wager that a good deal of our younger population are in favour the genre – voting Hilltop Hoods as the ‘Greatest Australian Songwriters Of All Time’ (number 14 overall), is a pretty good indication of this. Whether or not you agree with this result then, basically distinguishes which camp you stand in – you either do agree, or you think it’s the biggest load of laughable shit ever to be noted in modern history. Regardless of what the haters think though, hip-hop in Australia is a thriving scene right now. The Hoods have just released another huge record in State Of The Art, as did the Sydney based Bliss n’ Eso last year with Flying Colours, and for good or ill, out there in the trenches that make up the battlefield of Oz hip-hop, things are happening at a rate of knots.
By Sam Fell
Body: “Yeah, I guess it is an incredibly busy time, it’s very prosperous, it has the availability for people to really gather momentum because people have an interest in it,” muses Ryan Leaf, also known as Dialectrix, one of this country’s up and comers on the rap/hip-hop scene. “That being said, it’s so busy that it’s quite easy to be overshadowed by other artists. So I think there are pros and cons to the whole interest factor in Aussie hip-hop, but I think if you’re gonna put out quality product, you’re gonna get recognised and are only going to better yourself as an artist and better your career in the industry.” The reason Leaf and I are discussing such things, isn’t to dissect a genre that seems to have every music listener within earshot of a radio offering up an opinion. It’s to get a grasp on a scene that’s thriving, a scene that’s perhaps getting overloaded, a scene that is about to have something new thrown into the mix. That new thing, is Gully Platoon.
Gully Platoon, made up of Obese Records boss, Pegz, Leaf himself and Joe New (who used to work with Leaf in the Down Under Beats crew), is the newest contender for the Oz Hip-Hop Heavyweight Crown. Conceived around a year ago and about to release their debut record, GP read on paper as somewhat of an Obese Records supergroup, a crew looking to make some changes on the scene, to stand above the pack and show that there’s more to this genre of music than meets the ear. “You could call it a supergroup,” smiles Leaf. “I’d call it a hybrid of where Pegz is at, a little bit of Down Under Beats history with me and Joe… but I don’t know, it feels like a bit of a wanky thing to say about yourself – I’ll let other people say that, but I won’t claim it myself.”
Gully Platoon, and eventually the resulting record, The Great Divide, came about not long after Leaf released his first Dialectrix solo record, Cycles Of Survival, around September last year. Meeting with Pegz to discuss what was next, Leaf mentioned he was looking to start something new, as was Pegz. New was called in, and Gully Platoon (the phrase ‘gully’ meaning the dopest of the dope) came to be, a crew which as I mentioned, are looking to make some changes, to stand out. “Well actually, I’m waiting for fans to tell me (how we stand out),” reasons Leaf. “I already have my own anticipation of how we’ll be received, but I’ll never know until the wider community gets to hear it, so I’m waiting for what the entire audience has to say about it. If I was to add any opinion myself, I’d say it is very different, and I’m hoping it has the similar effect that possibly the Wu-Tang production has, in the sense that it’s slightly futuristic, to the point where people might not feel it that much initially, but hopefully it’s something that grows on them. It’s quite an eclectic record, and quite groundbreaking – maybe a little too futuristic for some people.”
The Great Divide – the culmination of six months of work from Pegz, Leaf and New who did all the writing, and the production and mixing talents of a stack of ring-ins, from J Squared, Plutonic Lab and J Smith & Dutchman, as well as vocal help from the likes of Kel Timmons, Cisco Tavares and Kulaia – isn’t a project that’s been taken lightly. “Yeah, like I said, if the record is received the way we want it to be received, it might be a bit hard to swallow at first, but then after ten or 20 listens becomes the best shit you’ve ever heard, if that’s how it’s taken, then we’ve achieved what we wanted through the music that we’ve made,” Leaf says of the record and its eclectic sound.
“If not, then I don’t know what I’ll think,” he goes on with a laugh. “I mean, you’re always gonna have people hate what you do, it’s the Murphy’s Law of being an artist, so I’m prepared for that, but I’m hoping that people understand where we’re coming from creatively…all I can say is that we’ve intended it to be slightly different and slightly futuristic.” GP are certainly coming from the right place – particularly in this genre, there’s absolutely no point in replicating what’s come before. “Exactly, we’ve really strived to not sound like anyone else on this record,” Leaf states. “There’s probably about half of the album which has a familiar sense about it, while the other half is where we go for a completely different, ominous, synthetic, jolted sound, which I think the people may or may not be ready for, but it’s definitely its own entity.”
In my opinion, Australian hip-hop needs more acts that are able to claim their own identity and produce material that isn’t only good (as a lot of acts on the scene do easily) but that is completely unique in it’s own right, it’s own entity. Gully Platoon are doing this, they’re trying to do this, and on the eve of the release of The Great Divide, Leaf and co. can do nothing but wait and see if their music has the desired effect. “I’m very happy with it, I never like to be content with what I’m doing, I like to be pretty harsh with myself, but here I’m gonna take a brief moment to be content with what we’ve done, and then I can hate on it for the rest of my life in about a week or so,” Leaf finishes with a laugh. The die is cast my friends, and so only time will tell whether or not the haters will be brought over, the lovers will embrace it, or whether it’s yet another release thrown into an already overcrowded scene. The debate will, no doubt, continue.
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