Hip hop has no instruction manual. That is pretty much true in the hip hop scene of Australia, and you don’t need The Herd’s or the Bliss N’ Eso’s of the world to tell you that. There is one outfit though from our fine city which took a weird path to where they are now in the scene.
“We kind of got into rap the backwards way, when we got to the age of sixteen we started to realise that the music we were exposed to in the mainstream media was mostly crap, the people we could see making hip hop sort of looked like us so we started going to the urban section of the CD store and picking albums that just looked good.”
Native Wit gives us the lowdown about how they got into the game of hip hop. He is one third of True VibeNation. He along with Verbaleyes provides the words, and DJ Gabreil Clouston on the decks specialises in the old school beats.
This outfit isn’t in this so-called game to just get a beat and spit over it though. “True VibeNation is supposed to be a play on the word vibration, which is the essence of both sound and energy, it means we are trying to create something real and honest to ourselves through the music”. Right on. But every band is basically on that never ending search for something real and honest. Is there more to the VibeNation than what Nate’s telling us? “We wanted a name that carried the idea of a collective unity, the idea of bringing people together, which is one of music’s most powerful traits”.
The True Vibenation crew is cemented into the ground in terms of being as accessible to the local surroundings in their music. A jump to their myspace sees the group pay homage to their local surrounds of C-town in a track called We Are The West. The support for the area also extend to the local community.
“We did a few hip hop workshops in high schools at the end of last year through a program called ‘Love Bites’ which uses hip hop as a way to educate kids about domestic violence and sexual assault. It’s really good to see the creativity of the kids and to see them learning in a fun way and we plan to continue doing that this year.”
Wit sees a lot of talent bubbling up under the current scene, a wellspring that he hopes to see conquer the current industry’s tendency to ignore and sideline local hip hop artists. “I think it’s cause of the hip hop scene in Sydney still being fairly small, but I think more people are starting to take notice as new generations of hip hop artists start to come through and those other established artists really cementing their place in the music. The support from the scene and the community is one of the best things about Sydney hip hop and it’s easy to relate to other people making the music when you share the same passion.”
True Vibenation have also just wrapped up finishing a sampler and are honing their eyes onto something bigger and better.
“It’s a five track CD designed to leave people guessing where we will be taking the music next and we will be launching it on February 19th at The Annandale Hotel. It will be a double CD launch with Rapaport who will be launching his debut album ‘Laughing on the Inside’ with support from Reverse Polarities and should be a really good night”.
Native Wit – so good at the plugs we music journo’s don’t have to do ’em!
Check them out at http://www.myspace.com/themessageaustralia
