Image by Savitri Wendt //

KILL THE DEAD is coming August 9th.

It’s hard to say what the debut album from First Nations collective 3% is going to sound like. So far the group, made up of Nooky, Dallas Woods and Angus Field, have dropped singles that pick and sample multiple flavours from the world of hip hop; we have their hard-hitting, electro-based first release ‘Our People ft. The Presets’, club-ready party banger ‘Sleazy Steezy Cool ft. Tia Gostelow’, anthemic call to arms ‘Land Back ft. Say True God & Denni’, and the soulfu recent release ‘Call Me Back’.

So where are we headed with KILL THE DEAD when it drops in a couple of months? Well, the consistent threads throughout 3%’s releases is a sense of reclamation, empowerment, and ultimately optimism, tied together by the rapping prowess of three of the country’s most powerful voices at the top of their game. We can safely assume that, wherever the additional tracks takes, there will be no relenting, no low points. The group is on a mission and nothing will dampen the fire that fuels them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtcsNHe74b8

“Everything was done to wipe my people off the face of the earth and write us out of history,” Nooky says. “Policies, chemical warfare of poisoning water holes and lacing blankets with smallpox to create an epidemic of introduced diseases. Massacres, marshal law and policies of removal to remove and breed out our blood. It all failed. Our resilience, strength, pride and beauty live on, in spite of all the monstrous acts of crime and war committed against my people.

“We still live and we still have enough love in our hearts to want to move forward. In history’s books, we should be dead. In some of Australia’s eyes, we don’t exist. To a majority of Australia, our voice doesn’t matter, we do not matter. How you gonna kill what’s already dead? You can’t. They can’t. The spirit we hold is one with this land, so even when we go, our lineage remembers. The trees, the rocks, the water remember. We are the oldest living, surviving race on earth. We are fukn eternal.”

“We never kill the dead because they live on in us,” adds Dallas Woods. “They remain in spirit. All the people that they tried to kill – the clans, they couldn’t kill, we still exist. We have survived. So you could never kill the dead, because we’re still alive. Their spirit will always be alive. They might be no longer here, but they are always here spiritually.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3Pu4a86gg

The trio are currently gearing up to perform the album in full with the help of Jess Mauboy, Tia Gostelow, Marlon Motlop, Stay True God and Denni (all of whom feature on the record) at Vivid Sydney this Friday – deets here. Be sure to follow this link and pre-order KILL THE DEAD right now.