Rhyme and reason for NZ hip-hop
James Croot reckons an entertaining collection of very personal, sometimes inspirational, and occasionally painful hip-hop stories makes for great Waitangi Day viewing.
Coming in the wake of fascinating and erudite documentaries on Dawn Raid Records and Scribe (TVNZ’s Return of the Crusader) and the excellent drama on the Polynesian Panthers (The Panthers) over the past year, any new overviews on the rise of Aotearoa hip-hop might struggle to have anything new to say.
However, Anahera Parata’s hour-long A Reason 2 Rhyme boasts more than just a catchy title.
It makes for enlightening, engrossing Waitangi Day viewing, as the genre’s local pioneers, including DLT, DJ Sir-Vere, Che Fu and Danny Haimona (better known as Dam Native) share their very personal, sometimes inspirational, occasionally painful stories of how their interpretation and spin on the musical style forged in the urban black communities of America changed their outlook and lives.
You’ll learn how Upper Hutt Posse’s groundbreaking Ma¯ ori rap record ETu¯ (inspired equally by Grandmaster Flash and James Brown) struck a chord, despite being snubbed by commercial radio (and the group’s lyrics being misheard as a call to ‘‘kill cops’’), that Che Fu and DLT’s Chains was as much a cultural touchstone as a musical success, how time in Tanzania with her social and youth worker parents influenced Ladi6, and that DLT discovered his true musical calling despite growing up in a household more likely to play Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin (‘‘All the stuff I hate now,’’ he laughs).
There’s jaw-dropping and hilarious footage of performances and events like the 1984 Bop Olympics in Auckland, as the interviewees reminisce about the highs and lows, and how ‘‘all the brown kids of the Pacific thought hip-hop was made for them’’.
And, it’s not just about the combination of, as Ladi6 so eloquently puts it, ‘‘lyrics meeting melody, meeting music’’, but the whole hip-hop package of poetry, dance, sound and visuals. She cites awardwinning 1983 US documentary Style Wars as pivotal, a showcase and dissection of hip hop culture that she and others are sure led overnight to an explosion of graffiti art in our big cities.
As he did in his own doco series, her cousin Scribe provides some of the most emotional moments, tearing up as he recounts how hip-hop saved his life, while University of Auckland popular music and ethnomusicology lecturer Dr Kirsten Zemke details how it has been an educational tool, both in terms of understanding history and imparting life skills.
The final word on this well-assembled, timely and refreshingly relaxed tale should go to DJ SirVere who describes it as ‘‘a fusion of tikanga, whakapapa and modern day culture, as told through the experiences of my peers’’.