Remember when most people considered ‘Aussie hip hop’ to be one of the most cringe-worthy terms in the musical vernacular? Eliciting mental images of Kerser and 360 deep in clumsy rap battles that are probably extra scenes cut from Channel Seven’s new program Bogan Hunters, any hip hop coming out of Australia seemed doomed to become a parody of itself.
Over the past year or so however, there’s been a complete shift in the Aussie music scene, with one of our writers so eloquently explaining “If you still subscribe to the stigma of Australian rappers being politically-troubled tank top bros, you’re really looking a) in all the wrong places or b) not hard enough.”
Young MCs like Baro and Remi are pushing boundaries of what it means to be an Australian hip hop artist, while acts like Milwaukee Banks (ex Flight Tonight and Polo Club members) are defying genre and national identity with worldly class and sophistication. Tkay Maidza is another figure in this exciting new school of emerging hip hop talent, at only 18 years old she’s already demanding attention both locally and overseas, and with a debut single like Brontosaurus it’s easy to see why.
‘U-Huh’ is Tkay’s latest single, a follow up to 2013’s ‘Brontosaurus’ and the more recent club banger ‘Arm Up’ for which she teamed up with Swick and Lewis Cancut to release via the Portugal based Enchufada collective. Catchy and accessible, ‘U-Huh’ is Tkay at her most straight-radio-pop we’ve seen so far, but Adelaide based MC is still able to show the world that she can spit better than the rest. Thanks to talents like Tkay and her contemporaries, Australian hip hop is no longer a dirty term.
