The wobbly table acts as precarious grounding for my can of Mornington Pale. I take a sip and check the time. half past one. Fuck it, it’s a Friday. Plus Seth Sentry is about to walk in any minute to join us to talk about his new single, his upcoming tour, and a whole bunch of other cool shit.
I can’t help but replay the lyrics to ‘The Waitress Song’ in my head as we wait. Although the table is wobbly, the coffee is actually pretty fucking good at Brunswick’s Wide Open Road Café, and that’s exactly what Seth orders as he sits down with us. He declines my offer of beer; he explains he just woke up after spending all night in the studio.
Breakfast in the afternoon at a café with a wobbly table of which Seth regularly frequents. It’s almost too fitting. The waitress comes over and takes our orders .
Waitress: You guys right for food?
Seth: I dunno about food aye, is there anything healthy-ish?
Waitress: What do you mean by healthy exactly?
Seth: Like, Not bad for you.
Waitress: Mushrooms are good, the broccolinis are really good.
Seth: Yeah let’s do that
Let’s do that, and let’s start this interview.
You’ve had a bit of success this past year with Strange New Past and the Aria win. How’s that all been for you?
“It’s been cool man, it’s good to have had the success that I’ve had with this album because I just wanted to make a dope rap album. We felt like things within rap were heading away from lyrics and new interesting flow patterns – it was going a lot softer, people were caring less about the rap side of things and we were just like ‘fuck it lets just make a dope rap album’. That was the aim, and it’s dope to have things like ‘Hell Boy’ get a spin on the radio where it’s just a straight out burner rap track. I like that.”
Can you tell me a bit about the upcoming tour? What’s with the whole presidential theme?
[include_post id=”477293″]”It’s all based around the single ‘1969’ which is about blowing up the moon and in the song a lot of it is from the president’s point of view. Australia doesn’t have a space program so it had to be America. So it kind of just took that theme as well, the candidacy happening at the same time now with Trump and all that – it seemed like the perfect time to tie everything in and just run with that, plus it was hella fun getting Sizzle [Seth’s Dj] and my drummer Stevie dressed up like secret service agents and shit.”
What’s on the horizon in terms of writing the next record?
“I’m not in a huge rush to write a record at the moment, my whole plan is just to kind of have fun with it and go back to how I was when I first started out where it was just writing for writing’s sake and just enjoying the process of writing.
Back in the day we would sit around a real shitty share house in Fitzroy and we’d just be passing around a crappy Gatorade bong and write raps and kind of compete with each other and that’s just what you did, you’d maybe write 20 or 30 versus a week and just thoroughly enjoy it. I wasn’t even thinking about putting songs together back then let alone an album.”
So as opposed to the artistic constraints of putting together a whole album, you might just chill and get back to how you used to do it?
“I think when you are working on an album it is more of a project and the raps sometimes take a bit of a back seat when it comes to song structure and things like that. I was talking to ’60 the other day about the same thing – how I miss the days of just writing for the sake of it and he’s kind of on the same page so we’re talking about maybe just doing that together and going back to just having a crew; a bunch of dudes who just fuckin, just rap.
As you get a bit older and as music becomes a job you take it a bit more serious and you start working by yourself a lot more which is weird man, I miss that energy, and that’s what I’ve noticed with dudes like Ivan Ooze, the younger dudes, they always have other rappers and other people around them – there’s a real competitive element to it and I fucking love that and I miss that.”
If given the choice out of the following three people to collaborate with, who would it be: Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders.
“They’re all terrible options. I mean, probably Sanders I guess because I agree with what he’s about the most and we could align concepts about what we’re writing about. Trump… yeah… they’re all terrible options.”
On a more serious note are you looking to collaborate with anyone specific soon?
[include_post id=”433964″]”Man, those kind of things, for me at least, always happen organically. I’m not real big on forcing it which is why I’ve never had a collaboration on my album before, except for Remi, Remi did a hook on ‘Nobody Like Me’.
I really don’t fuck with collaborations, I always have such a strong idea conceptually about a song and what I want to write about that if they don’t write something that doesn’t quite fit the narrative that I have in mind it’s not going to work for me and no one likes being told what to write about so that’s why I don’t do collaborations.”
I used to play The Waiter Minute everyday on repeat on the bus to school. Those five songs – there was one for every mood – and you seem to do that really well, seamlessly switching from light-hearted shit to deep social commentary and back again, is that something that comes naturally to you?
“I think it just comes from writing when you’re in different states of mind and also I think the beat dictates that quite a lot. I’m very guided by how the beat feels – if I start playing the beat and it gives me a certain feeling then I will write a certain way.
I’m constantly thinking of ideas for songs – rhyme schemes, flow patterns and punch lines – but it’s not until I get a beat from my producer that I get a certain feeling that I start writing to. No matter how dope a beat is when I’m going through a catalogue, there’s gotta be a vibe, it’s gotta give me a certain mood, that’s very important to me.”
You’re a great story teller, you have a knack for taking listeners on a journey, do you do any writing apart form song writing?
“I used to write a lot of weird space stories when I was a kid where I’m pretty much just jacking Star Wars, and creative writing I was big on in school, but yeah then I started rapping.
These days the only writing I do outside of rap is when I haven’t written for a while I’ll normally do this thing where I’ll start everyday by filling up a page full of nonsense.
I find it’s a good way to kind of just kick in and get your brain working so I’ll write a page of just words – whatever flows out of me kind of thing and a lot of the time that ends up becoming the start of a song. Like that psyche test where they give you word association and you say the first thing that pops into your head – it’s like that but for a whole page. It’s quite good.”
I heard you scribbled down rhymes for many of the tacks for The Waiter Minute EP on docket pads and serviettes between orders when you were working in local restaurants – can you bring me back to that time and give me an idea of where your head was at? Were you confident things were going to work out or was there a bit of self doubt lingering?
“Definitely self doubt because I guess I wasn’t really trying that hard, mainly because it didn’t really seem that possible. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want it but I definitely didn’t see it coming. It seemed so ludicrous to become a career rapper – I was pissed off that it wasn’t happening and I was perpetually angry because hospitality fucking sucks but I didn’t put all my stock in it, it was just a bit of a fanciful dream to me so at the time I was working on it just for the sheer passion of it.
I wanted to just rap for myself and get things out that I wanted to say and try and hurt other rapper’s feelings along the way. I certainly never wanted to be famous or anything like that, that doesn’t factor into it at all. It’s really just about being a dope rapper, for me.”
You’re an observant guy, and part of the power of your work is that you seem to be saying what a lot of people are thinking. We’re human beings and we’re constantly evolving, constantly learning, do you feel like you see the world a bit differently than the Waiter Minute Seth saw the world? And in what ways?
[include_post id=”450048″]Oh yeah absolutely. I’m definitely less angry, but I mean I think as you get older you don’t have that same anger that you had.
People are like ‘man you’ve changed’ – no shit – people change. You hit thirty and you’re different than you were when you were twenty. That’s going to happen to everybody, its going to happen to the dude who wrote ‘you changed’ on my Facebook page. So I think it’s good to not fight that and go with it because with that change can come new interesting angles plus I think it’s cool to go on that journey.
So yeah I’m definitely less angry at the world… I do miss being that angry because it was definitely a bit of a fire for me to write to – because everything pisses you off when you’re twenty. Everything.”
Without change there is no evolution, without evolution there is stagnation. So somebody saying you’ve changed can be taken as a compliment do you reckon?
“Yeah of course, absolutely. And I have no problem with the change. I feel like I’m far more settled now, far more comfortable with who I am, I just don’t have time for small talk and petty shit anymore, I know exactly what I want to do now and it’s kind of refreshing as you get older you learn not to waste your time on a bunch of shit that is not helping you get to where you want to be.”
When you were working at the restaurant, did you find yourself hit a point where it was either do or die – jump in and chase the dream and leave, or did you find you kind of left only once you had rap established.
“Um, I quit the job… fuck, when did I quit? I think I quit right after ‘The Waitress Song’ started getting played and I started touring because yeah I thought holy shit I’m on the fucking radio, I did it – I thought that’s all there was so I quit. In a really big way.”
Was the song ‘Thanks For Your Hospitality’ based on that?
“A little bit. It was a good quit. And then I started touring and I realised I’m not actually making any money out of this and as soon as I started writing This Was Tomorrow I had to get my fucking job back – I had to go back to that same place that I quit and get my job back and write again which made me super heated – that was probably a really good thing because I was very frustrated at that point in time and song writing was just so easy.
I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with rap but I knew exactly what I didn’t want to do with life and that was working in hospitality so that kind of fuelled me and then once This Was Tomorrow came out I quit my job for the second time and never went back.”
Now that you are living a life that isn’t the hospitality life, is it what you imagined it to be?
“Yeah, I mean, I guess so. It’s certainly not as lucrative as people think and I guess like anything you do sometimes forget how lucky you’ve been. I
have to remind myself every now and again – this is pretty fucking cool, like, 18-year-old me would blow out at the fact that I’m a professional rapper. So it’s good to just start rapping for the sake of rapping just to remind myself how dope this is and get back to the fun side of it. I think it’s something that’s missing in rap at the moment – people just having fun and kind of flexing on tracks and shit.
The only dudes who really do that now are the underground cats, it seems as soon as dudes become established, they stop trying a little bit on the rap side – because they don’t have to. You lose the hunger a little bit because you’re not at the bottom of the pecking order so I want to still rap like I’m on the bottom of the pecking order.”
You can follow author David Allegretti on Twitter at @davidallegretti.
SETH SENTRY NATIONAL TOUR DATES
Thursday, 30th June 2016
The Racehorse Hotel, Ipswich
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Friday, 1st July 2016
Hotel Brunswick, Brunswick Heads
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Saturday, 2nd July 2016
The Triffid, Brisbane
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Thursday, 7th July 2016
Westernport Hotel, San Remo
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Friday, 8th July 2016
170 Russell, Melbourne
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Saturday, 9th July 2016
The Wool Exchange, Geelong
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Friday, 15th July 2016
Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Saturday, 16th July 2016
ANU Bar, Canberra
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Sunday, 17th July 2016
Home Nightclub, Wagga Wagga
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Friday, 29th July 2016
Discovery, Darwin
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Saturday, 30th July 2016
The Gov, Adelaide
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Friday, 5th August 2016
Club 54, Launceston
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Saturday, 6th August 2016
Uni Bar, Hobart
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Thursday, 11th August 2016
Prince of Wales, Bunbury
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Friday, 12th August 2016
Metro City, Perth
Tickets: Seth Sentry
Saturday, 13th August 2016
Settlers Tavern, Margaret River
Tickets: Seth Sentry
