INTERVIEW - OZI BATLA
Published: The Vine, July 9, 2010.

Comparative to the quality of his output, Shannon Kennedy (aka Ozi Batla) would have to be one of domestic hip-hop’s most unsung wordsmiths. Having made a name fronting sprawling Sydney collective The Herd (alongside ubiquitous partner in crime Urthboy) and dub-flecked hip-hop trio Astronomy Class, the quality of the rapper’s verse and flow can’t be overstated. Put simply, over the past decade Kennedy has been responsible some of Australian rap’s most powerful, politically charged and lyrically sophisticated moments.

Long-awaited solo debut Wild Colonial doesn’t disappoint. Brimming with gritty, narcotic loops and raw, soul-drenched Golden Era aesthetics (courtesy of former Good Buddha beatsmith Sandro), it makes for a master class of classic, New York influenced hip-hop.

On the eve of his Wild Colonial tour, we talk to Ozi about immortal hip-hop archetypes, stepping out on his own and the importance of positioning Australian hip-hop in a much wider historical and artistic context. 

Hey Shannon, how are you?

Good man, just reading the paper. How are you doing?

Good, good. Hey, I’m loving Wild Colonial…

Thanks.

It really feels like an early ’90s hip-hop record, which to me is really kind of refreshing.

Yeah, well that’s probably reflective of me and Sandro’s tastes and definitely the way Sandro works with beats. He follows a sort of process that was perfected in that time with the kind of equipment that he uses and the way he goes about finding his samples. So it’s definitely the kind of hip-hop that I still enjoy and, you know, we used that as a basis in many ways.

Did the relationship with Sandro define the trajectory of the record in the first place? Like, was he always the guy who you wanted to make your solo album with?

Not initially. I was just kind of shopping around, and obviously, I know a lot of people who make great beats just from being around for a while. But not long into it, I realised that more than half the beats I was using were Sandro’s, so it just made sense to kind of do it together. A lot of my favourite albums are done by the same production team. It just makes it a bit more cohesive musically and it just makes it really easy to work as well, because we live in neighbouring suburbs and there weren’t all these other people to be chasing up.

Yeah, it’s an odd thing these days, just how many records will have five or six producers on the beats. It can be really interesting, but often it doesn’t really feel like an album in the end; it feels like an interesting clutch of tracks instead…

Yeah, yeah, the way people listen to music is changing and I feel like that’s sort of a symptom of it. Albums aren’t really as big as they were before and with stuff like iTunes, where people can pick and choose their favourite songs off a record, I don’t know if albums are as important to a lot of listeners anymore. It’s still what I enjoy though, and the more cohesive the album the better in my mind.

What made now the right time for your solo record? Was it for practical reasons, like you had a gap in your schedule, or did you really feel that you had a lot of things to say at this point in your life?

Yeah, well I’ve had the idea up my sleeve for a few years and it’s been pretty constant with The Herd and Astronomy Class since about 2005 or 2006. But I knew that this year, The Herd would just be working on new music and Chasm from Astronomy Class was just kind of focussing on his solo stuff and his work with Vida Sunshine, so I did have a little gap. That was kind of the main reason in a way. Often you’re kind of thinking in terms of album cycles and what’s coming up in the next year for the label and you know, it was just the right time.

The record has a really personal dynamic lyrically, I think more so than your work in The Herd, which I usually think of in a more political context. There seems a lot more self-reflection on Wild Colonial.

Yeah sure…

Now that the record’s out there, is that kind of a tough thing, like you’re giving people more of a slice of yourself?

Yeah, I kind of allude to that on ‘Doesn’t Matter’, the second-last track. It’s funny, I came up with the Ozi Batla thing fifteen years ago and it does take on a life of its own to a certain extent and people have an impression of you that might not really fit who you are so much. But yeah, I enjoy it. I don’t spend a lot of time trying to fit in or hoping that your peers or whoever else will accept it or like it. I think I’m just at a point now where I prefer just to be honest on record and make music that’s art for me as well.

So I guess it is a little bit daunting, but I kind of embrace that. If it seemed like it was a little bit too raw and personal when I was writing it, I kind of decided that it was probably heading in the right direction in this case.

As a man in his thirties, as opposed to a kid in his twenties, do you feel that your relationship to the tropes of the music industry has really changed, as though there’s more of an acceptance of where you’re at, rather than always aspiring to ‘make it’ or something?

We spend a lot of time in our twenties trying to change ourselves to be what we want to be or get to where we want to get to, but when we make it to our thirties we get a little more accepting about life in general. There are some things you can’t change about yourself and the world, and that doesn’t mean that you stop striving to do knew stuff, but I suppose my need for approval from my peers or from my audience is not so great now. I’ve achieved a few of the things I’ve wanted to, so if people have come along for the ride this far, they should be able to sort of take me as I am (laughs).

Hip-hop’s still in its thirties as well and it’s sort of an interesting thing. The albums that I sort of gravitate towards, when I was growing up it was all about the fresh, young kids – and hip-hop still is about fresh, young kids in a way – but there’s also a whole generation of those guys who were the fresh, young kids in the 80s and 90s who are now making these sort of more rounded, more accomplished albums. It’s really cool; it’s like an evolution of hip-hop from being about the rawness and something really direct and in-your-face, to people like Q-Tip and Pharoahe Monch putting out two of my favourite records of last few years.

So I think it’s an evolution of hip-hop. It’s grown up and a lot of the guys I grew up listening to and are touring again are now in their forties or whatever. So that young, raw energy will always be there and will always be a driving force of hip-hop, but it’s nice that it can expand and become more sophisticated or something.

I love the Black Star pastiche on ‘Integrity’…

Oh yeah, BDP originally.

Of course, Boogie Down…

But yeah, I tried to load the album up with lots of references in the lyrics and obviously lots of movie samples as well. It’s something I love doing, putting these little puzzles or little keys in the lyrics that encourage listeners to go back and find and listen to the originals.

For sure. Something I’ve spoken to Urthboy about a lot over the years is the importance or willingness, as an Australian rapper, to place yourself in the wider context of hip-hop, where a lot of the younger kids tend to place themselves in the context of “Australian hip-hop”. There was that sort of almost nationalistic movement for a while, which was very disturbing. Your records really seem to echo with that idea that your place in Sydney, Australia informs your music but doesn’t in any way define it. You’re part of a much longer lineage…

Yeah, it’s something that I’ve noticed as well and it kind of worries me a bit. Hip-hop’s a rich culture as well as just a musical form or a style and if you limit yourself to Australian hip-hop then you’re missing out on a good 95 or 99 per cent of the history of the culture. For me, it’s not what hip-gop’s about either. It’s not about trying to close yourself off or distance yourself from other people; it’s about inclusion and if you’re making hip-hop in Australia then you should realise that you’re part of a really broad, worldwide family.

It’s another reason for putting in a lot of the references. I’d really like for a lot of the younger listeners to dig out some of those records that they might not think are all that relevant, but if they were to ask their favourite Australian hip-hop artists what they value, there would be a lot of those in there as well.

That’s one thing that seems to be getting lost with the move away from sample-based hip-hop, that sense of direct reference. While it’s really great hearing people making their own beats from their own palette of materials, it does tend to lose that historical, exploratory aspect that made earlier hip-hop so rich. For me and, I’m sure, for a lot of people, listening to hip-hop opened the door to soul and all kinds of more historical musics…

It really is a postmodern art form at its essence. It started with people rapping over disco beats, then became about sampling James Brown records, so the self-referential nature of it and the way it links to an even broader and richer vein of musical history, for me that’s always been the interesting part. I love trying to find out what the samples are on my favourite tunes and that’s always been part of its strength.

The legalities of it all have meant that what’s become major label hip-hop just doesn’t do that anymore. To my ears, it’s just led to a lot of same-same sounding records over the last few years.

Tell me a little about this idea of Wild Colonial thematically. There’s a strong historical thread to the record.

I suppose I was trying to draw a parallel between how I come to terms with being an Australian and how I come to terms with being an MC in both senses, you know, being a white male who is part of the colonisers of this country. So it’s about drawing on my family history of being an Australian, then at the same time thinking about how hip-hop really is a foreign culture and it’s one that I’ve been fascinated by from an early age. So I guess it’s my attempt to show respect for the originators of the culture or the people on the land who were here before me. Respect is integral to being able to understand what came before you and to do it justice and to progress it.

It might be a long bow to draw, but that was kind of my concept. It’s sort of a metaphor for how I arrived to hip-hop. It’s very easy to repeat the same mistakes. I find ideas and culture and history fascinating, so I guess I’m just trying to encourage my listeners to find it as interesting as I do.

Is that you singing on the title track?

Yeah, that’s me singing on all of them.

I thought that might have been Urthy. It had like a touch of an Aussie Screamin Jay Hawkins vibe to it…

(Laughs) Yeah, I kind of belted that one out. It was a five-Strepsil afternoon. That was late last year around the time I did the Paul Kelly tribute shows in Melbourne and I had my shopping list of guest singers I wanted on the album, but I’d sung all the demos already. A couple of friends whose opinions I value heard the demos and kind of said that I should just go for it myself and it was good, you know. I’m happy with the result.

Dan Rule

Wild Colonial is out now through Elefant Traks/Inertia.

myspace.com/ozibatla

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