LAD RAP WONT SAVE OZ HIP HOP

Lad rap is hectic. An underground Australian style borne from the Sydney criminal subculture, it’s players rap about bitches, knives, robbing, selling drugs and how awesome they are. You’ve seen lads on the train. They swear and wear sports clothes and striped polo shirts. Generally they aren’t very pleasant to be around. Now imagine these guys with the resources to record music.
Prime examples of Australia’s lad rap include Sky’High, Nter, Kerser, Sydney Serchaz, Skeamo and Gravy Baby.

Lad rap is not the next big thing. It’s not the last great hope of Australian hip-hop. Most of it isn’t even very good but it will save Australian hip-hop.
Music needs edginess and uncensored voices even if these voices are saying awful and anti-social things. It needs big egos and personalities offering an alternative to what radio offers. Rap is a genre that especially needs these things. Lad rap offers them in spades.
Take Kerser. The 27 year-old rapper from Campbelltown in Sydney’s outer west has nearly 60 000 YouTube subscribers and 230 000 Facebook fans. King, his most recent album debuted at number one on the Australian iTunes’ hip-hop charts all without having any radio play. Though he is signed to Obese, Australia’s most respected independent hip hop label Kerser has been able to gain a following through Internet hijinks without compromising his message. As he mentioned in an interview earlier this year, “A lot of artists make that [radio] their main focus whereas I never did. I went nah, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing”.
He seems to be doing OK.

From the 90s to mid-2000s, the Australian rap scene was a torrid landscape. Adelaide’s Hilltop Hoods, received some mainstream media recognition but other acts like Lyrical Commission and 750 Rebels while having decent local followings remained too underground to be heard on a national level.
In 2014 things have changed. Rap occupies a large share of Australia’s music industry and mainstream radio and blogs have wholly-endorsed acts such as Seth Sentry, 360, Allday, Bliss n Eso, Illy and Pez. All have played the safe game and are relatively dull. While it has grown commerically Australian rap has lost its edge.
This isn’t meant to be a contrived lecture about the virtues of ‘real hip hop’ or some outdated, elitist concept bandied about by less successful or embittered rappers. Hip hop in its purest form was always about giving voice to the less powerful and promoting empowerment and freedom of expression. Musically it was to provide an alternative and counter to the pop-infested landscape of the 80s and 90s.

 

But you still cant beat the originals rapping about the four elements not the fake 5th LADIZM CUNT YEAH.

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