After almost a year of hard work and planning, Sydney hip hop collective One Day have released their debut album, 'Mainline', and are touring it next month.
The group — don't call them a supergroup — comprise hip hop artists from Horrorshow, Spit Syndicate, Jackie Onassis and Joyride. The collective of seven friends have known each other since their high school days, and while going off to work on their own projects, they've always collaborated.
Finally they decided to all take the time to work on one project together. “We basically decided we wanted to go on tour together,” explains Spit Syndicate's Nick Lupi. “We all thought that'd be the most fun shit that we could do, and the only way that we could really justify going on tour together was releasing an album. So it's existed for a while, One Day, and I guess about a year ago we made a decision to really start letting other people, beyond our hardcore fans, know about the crew and what it means and how it all came together.”
"We all think it's some of our strongest work."
While it was difficult for them to work their schedules around each other, they found a way to make it work. Nick says that once they realised they had something really special in the works, and something that hasn't really been seen in Australia before, they prioritised the project as #1. For the most part, the album was written and recorded with all seven members present.
“We went up to Byron Bay late last year and hired out this villa and just turned it into a studio," Nick explains. "[We] up-ended the beds, rearranged all the furniture ... That's where all the music came from. We did a lot of writing up there, it wasn't all finished up there but the vast majority of the album happened on that writing trip to Byron Bay.
"Then when it came to record it we did a similar thing. We went and hired another holiday house and flipped the mattresses again and turn it into a studio and just recorded there for a week. That idea of getting all your mates together, going away and upending some mattresses in a holiday house... that's a very important part of this album.”
As a group of friends, rather than a group of individuals, working on this album was an interesting experience. "[Working together] was many things — it was fun, it was exciting, it was exhausting, it was a learning process. We're all good friends, which is great because we're very comfortable with each other and we know how to deal with each other. But a downside of perhaps being that comfortable with each other is that we don't hold back from giving our opinions on things. It's like any family — there are highs, there are lows, but ultimately you're all in it for the same thing.”
Nick believes that their competitive nature has made this album some of each member's best work yet. “We all feel like it's our best work to date... As much has we are friends, it's just the nature of hip hop — you want to be the best. Whether you're making the beats, you're rapping, you're doing the chorus — it's really competitive and it's brought out the best in us.
"We all think it's some of our strongest work. The production sounds very advanced in my opinion, it's the best raps that all the individuals have ever written... I think it's going to catch a lot of people by surprise.”
'Mainline' is now available.
Written by Darcy Stephens
One Day Tour Dates
Fri Sep 5 - 170 Russel (Melbourne)Sat Sep 6 - Waratah Hotel (Hobart)
Fri Sep 12 - HQ (Adelaide)
Sat Sep 13 - Capitol (Perth)
Fri Sep 19 - Enmore Theatre (Sydney)
Sat Sep 20 - The Hi-Fi (Brisbane)
Fri Sep 26 - ANU Bar (Canberra)
