A path for legends
FROM his bedroom in West Dubbo to the world, local rapper Ngali Shaw released his second album “A Path For Legends” on Tuesday this week.
It’s now instantly available on Youtube, itunes, Spotify and many other online platforms for audiences around the globe to hear and enjoy. Find him by searching his stage name, 2Ktrilla.
The first single off the album is called Same Block, which the talented 20-year-old wrote last year.
He completed the filming of its music video clip well before the horrific murder of George Floyd in the USA ignited a global Black Lives Matter uproar.
Same Block is a prophetic expression of something very similar.
Though reluctant to focus on his own experiences of racism and harassment, the former Delroy High School student chooses to let his music and lyrics do the talking.
“I write about everything that’s going on. Self-harm, love, breakups. It helps me get through because I don’t really talk to people, so I put it into song and write it down. Hopefully other people who are going through the same thing can relate, can just listen to it and get through it,” the rapper told
To create his songs, he sits at a small desk in his bedroom, working with a laptop, a mic, software and a need to perform.
As a member of an Aboriginal dance group at Delroy, he was once offered a scholarship from Dubbo Ballet Studio when they collaborated on a project together and, for a while, he bucked the family tradition of playing football or planning to join the Air Force as three of his siblings have done, and spent many hours honing his dancing skills.
His inner rap music kept tugging at him however, and for a time he performed locally as “Air” before switching to 2Ktrilla when his uploads clashed repeatedly with a popular Swedish band also called Air.
He was influenced to become 2Ktrilla by rapper Rick Ross who first made up ‘trilla’ as a word.
“He combined the words True and Real and made it Trilla, and I thought I’m going to put that in my name. One of my favourite rappers has 2K in the front of his name, so I went with 2Ktrilla,” Mr Shaw said.
Though his career is moving quickly in the right direction, Mr Shaw sings about his cultural roots and sometimes in Wiradjuri, and though he’s learnt that from an app, it does speak to cultural losses.
One of his Wiradjuri verses says “I’m sick of how we’re living today. I want to go back to how we used to live, back in the Dreamtime, how we used to hunt kangaroos and back to when being black wasn’t a crime.”
As he grows into the role of a rap star, there’s a pretty good chance the boy from Bunglegumbie Road’s future is on a path for legends.