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Perth MusicScribe Interview
Kiwi rap sensation Scribe released his sophomore album Rhyme Book in September last year, following on from the massive success of his 2003 Platinum selling debut album, The Crusader, which included the hits “Not Many” and “Stand Up”. Scribe has been announced as part of the all star lineup for this years Splendour In The Grass music festival and just completed a remix of Grammy Award winning musician, rapper and producer Wyclef Jean’s track Fast Car who recently visited Australia to host the MTV Australia Awards. Scribe caught up with Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.
Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (11:33 - 1.3Mb)
When it was released last year Rhyme Book reached number 4 on the NZ charts and number 9 on the ARIA charts. I asked Scribe how he felt the album was received. “It’s been received well by the critics which is something we set out to do, we really wanted to just make good music and not really top the charts or anything. We definitely wanted to make some decent hip hop, some hip hop with some substance as well as challenge ourselves with the sounds we were using and step away from The Crusader. I think we achieved everything we set out to do.”
Scribe took four years between his first and second albums while his daughter was born and he could start a family. “It was weird. Life happens around you and things change and having a baby is definitely one way to change your life. It was something that changed my life completely from where i was at the time. I was living my life on the road and living the big music dream and then when my daughter was born just changed everything. It changed my priorities, it changed my motivation to do what I do and I decided to take a lot of time off to find that balance between having a family and having a career. My career just took a back seat for a while and I come from a big family and am very family orientated and ‘Family Comes First’ has always been one of our family motto’s. I live by that.”
Each song on Rhyme Book was supposed to sound like a different page in a book might be read. I asked Scribe if there was a lot that didn’t end up on the album. “There were a lot of songs that we couldn’t clear the samples for, all the songs I did with P Money. It was a real shame because the music we make has a special thing going on, I can’t explain it. Ever since we started making music together it has ended up something special and it was definitely in this case as well. The songs that we had made I had already, in my head, planned to have as singles and then when we didn’t get the samples cleared it really took the balls out of what we were doing. Because of the time line and it had already been four years, my label was screaming about it and it was too late to go back to the drawing board. Me and P Money sat down and went ‘Shit we didn’t get these songs cleared, what are we gonna do?’ and we just had to bite the bullet and run with it without our big singles.”
I also asked Scribe how he has felt about the great success he has had in his native New Zealand as well as in Australia. “Australia has saved my life to be honest with you. Being successful in Australia has just changed my whole career, New Zealand is a very small place and it doesn’t take long to become a big fish in a small pond. Having Australia be so receptive to my music has been a real blessing for me because it has allowed me to come over and play shows like Splendour and the Big Day Out and things that we don’t have over here. It has exposed me to experiences and helped me to improve and progress as a performer and has actually given me a taste of wanting to take my music even further. Without Australia giving me the love and support that they have I doubt that I could do what I do for a living.”
Asked whether he believes audiences in Australia are different to those in New Zealand, Scribe explained “You guys have had a festival culture for such a long time, everyone getting together and having a good old party where as in New Zealand we really don’t have that festival scene. That is because a) the weather here is shit, it’s always cold and everyone is always in a bad mood and b) we are such a small market place, we just don’t have the numbers to get the big acts to come to our country. Even when we do have a big show people don’t know how to act over here because they’ve never been exposed to that kind of thing and it seems a lot of kiwi’s in the hip hop scene are too cool to have a good time and ruin their shoes or whatever.”
Rhyme Book is out now. For more info on Scribe visit www.scribescribe.com
Splendour In The Grass 2008
Sun 3rd August
Belongil Fields, Byron Bay NSW
Devo, Wolfmother, Sigur Ros, The Polyphonic Spree, New Young Pony Club, The Living End, The Presets, Tricky, Yves Klein Blue, Lyrics Born, Vampire Weekend, Ben Lee, Cold War Kids, The Fratellis, The Wombats, Pnau, Laura Marling, The Vines, The Grates, Operator Please, Band of Horses, Van She, The Panics, Gyroscope, Mstrkrft, Lightspeed Champion, The Brown Birds from Windy Hill, Scribe, The Music, The Gin Club, Tokyo Police Club, Little Red, Clare Bowditch, Bluejuice, Robert Forster, The Drones, Hadouken!, Bliss n Eso, Paul Dempsey, Katalyst, Even, British India, The Galvatrons, Delta Spirit, Slot Machine, The Black Stars, Van She Tech, Bag Raiders, Soft Tigers Food Fight, E.L.F DJ, Kato and Pob.
