Words by Christopher Kevin Au
REMI – consisting of emcee Remi and producer Sensible J – aren’t your ordinary hip-hop duo. They’ve shattered any stereotypes left clinging to the Australian hip-hop scene, and have made a truckload of solid tunes in the process.
I meet the two on our office porch, where they’re hand-rolling cigarettes and engaging in light-hearted banter about Xzibit’s last Australian tour. Remi is jovial, cracking jokes at every opportunity with infectious energy. His Xzibit impersonation is terrifyingly accurate. Sensible J is quieter, but all of his contributions to the conversation are sage and considered. He has a mentor’s spirit and an impressive beard to boot. Soon after, a lady walks past with a dog in a pram. Remi captures the monumental moment for his Instagram account, and the day is off to a blazing start.
Still, seeing pets in unorthodox transportation devices is just the latest highlight in a string of successes for REMI. In 2014, they took out the $50,000 Carlton Dry Global Grant, with Remi graciously accepting the prize in Nike trackpants. In 2015, they bagged another $30,000 after winning the Australian Music Prize. They’ve just performed at Splendour In The Grass, with Remi also dropping a guest verse at Flume’s colossal closing set at the Ampitheatre.
Next week, their album Divas & Demons will score the coveted feature album spot on Triple J, and they’ll be hitting the road on a headline tour come November. It’s no wonder that Remi says that “I feel like we won, the fact that we can do music full time – every day is Friday for us.” With all of their accolades, it’s easy to see why critics have been raving loudly about REMI, and quick to label them as a part of a ‘new wave’ of Australian hip-hop acts alongside collaborators like Baro and Sampa The Great.
“New wave and all that kind of shit – it doesn’t really mean anything to me, it’s just more options. You know as a fan of all hip-hop, you know how many different genres exist inside hip-hop itself, so the fact that Australia’s getting to a point where we do have mad options, it just seems right. It’s what hip-hop is supposed to do,” Remi says. Sensible J echoes his colleague’s sentiments, saying “people are maybe looking for something different to what’s been around for the last 15 years. I’ve been making beats since 2006, so I don’t feel like part of any new wave because I’ve been doing the same thing for 10 years. For some reason they’re now highlighting people like Baro, Remi and Sampa which is cool. We’re all about it.”
“The fact that I’m African and Baro’s African is the probably same reason that they put us in the same fuckin’ column. The same with Sampa, you know? All these people are coming up, but I’m not mad at it. I think its awesome that they are publicising that shit, because it’s not like people of colour haven’t been making music, it’s just that now they’re allowed to make music,” Remi says. Baro is someone who Remi describes as a ‘little brother’ – the two have matching tattoos on their forearms – with the two artists collaborating on the succinctly titled and unapologetically fierce track ‘Fuck The Judge‘.
Crafted in opposition to the murders of unarmed black men in America at the hands of police, Remi isn’t holding back on the issue. “It just feels like every time that we say something positive for our struggle or shed light to something that is so obvious, it’s just thrown back in your face. And that’s a global problem, you see shit that’s going on in the States. You watch a man get shot six times unarmed on his back and they’ll ask ‘What did he do?’ You know you don’t really need to ask ‘What did he do?’ Whatever that was, it was injustice,” he says.
Those murders have given momentum to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, which has spread Down Under in the form of demonstrations and fundraisers in Sydney and Melbourne – allowing us to re-examine Australia’s own history with regards to Indigenous issues. Remi is positive about the number of his hip-hop colleagues who are now speaking up, saying “we just surround ourselves with people that are like-minded. That’s why ignorance breeds ignorance, and positivity breeds positivity. And I think it says something for the Australian music scene that we can make songs like ‘Fuck the Judge,’ we can make songs like ‘Loose Leaf.’ Briggs can make songs like ‘Bad Apples‘ – the filter in the arts is starting to be less negative than it has been in the past.”
Still, the two make it clear that there’s an uphill battle when it comes to race relations in Australia, with Remi pointing to the recent AFL controversies as an example. “You see how they did Adam Goodes, they like their black people silent as shit,” Remi says. “Just be good on the mic or good on the sports field. Don’t say anything about Australia as a whole,” Sensible J continues. They suggest that the road to recovery starts at home. “There’s still a lot of stuff that we need to work on. Mostly just admitting a lot of things – admitting that the land that we are on is 100% stolen, and stolen in the worst way. To me, that is the main thing that needs to be addressed, because we can’t accept anybody else that looks different until we start accepting what we’ve done,” Remi says.
“There’s just a whole lot of denial. There’s a whole lot of denial and guilt, and I hope that people can start to learn to accept their guilt, and just accept that they do have a privilege, because I don’t think that that’s a bad thing. The privilege part, I don’t think it’s a bad thing – you’re just born with it, the same way I was born with black skin. You’re born with that, and it’s what you do with that. Even as a man I recognise that I have privilege. As a straight man I recognise that I have privilege, and it took a lot for me to just go through that with myself, to sit down and say, ‘Yes you’ve been vilified your whole life, but in comparison to a lot of people you were lucky.’ And it’s how you use that privilege from there, and if people could start using it for the right reasons, then I think that’s how we grow. That’s what I hope Australia will get to one day,” Remi continues.
Racial issues are just one aspect of Divas & Demons, which also tackles relationship breakdowns with multiple perspectives, like lead single ‘For Good‘ – which examines both sides of the story with Sampa The Great, who recorded a hook and verse in under 30 minutes. “I hope you like it, but I hope you can’t relate to too much of it because it’s some depressing shit. It’s depressed but don’t feel depressed about it,” Remi says. Sensible J notes that “you can like dance to it, there’s beats. You can cry and dance at the same time.” And one message about the album for their fans?
“If you like it, buy it on iTunes,” Sensible J laughs. “That’s gonna get us the most dough, or Bandcamp. If you like it, buy it on Bandcamp because you get the highest quality files,” Remi adds. You heard the boys – if their track record and the lead singles are anything to go by, this should be a big one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwfm9wuIj40
