Now embarking on their second decade of making music together, Schoolfight’s hip hop is a unique brew of humour, funk, soul and... beer.
“We do like beer,” laughs Schoolfight frontman Emcyte (pronounced MC Whitey). “I like beer a lot. And who doesn't? Who doesn't like beer? Come on.
“We built a pyramid to the sky one time. We did a show and hadn’t got paid shit but we did get paid in tinnies. And we built a pyramid. It put Egypt to shame this motherfucker. It was structurally strong, you could rest a small child on top of it. This shit was engineering at its very best. I think I got drunk and fell into it at the end. By then we'd had enough to drink, but we kind of needed to finish the pyramid so you know, you gotta keep drinking. I didn't get a photo though, that's a shame. But it was impressive. It was impressive.”
Emcyte acknowledges there’s a certain amount of boganism associated with the band’s beer-swilling antics and attitude on stage, but he argues it’s unfair to associate this solely to hip hop. “I think hip hop gets a bad rap. There's definitely a larrikin Aussie undertone to it but that's in every genre of music. You go backstage at some of these festivals and talk to rockers and they're snapping VBs and talking with that nasal accent. There's fucking bogans everywhere. That's not a hip hop thing, it's an Australian music thing.”
Addressing one of the major stereotypes about the Australian hip hop scene, Emcyte explains the carbon-copy ‘Aussie hip hop’ stuff you hear on commercial radio isn’t representative of hip hop in Australia as a whole. “A lot of the radio stuff you hear, the high rotation Nova stuff, you're going to get similarities there between artists because people follow what's trendy, what's happening, so if one cat jumps on it, a lot of cats tend to. But that's a very small portion of the market. Hip hop in Australia is wide and varied. If you look hard enough you'll find something that's special. There's plenty of good stuff out there.
“My best advice for people is look, search, do your own homework. Don't rely on a fucking radio to tell you what you should be listening to. With underground stuff, the artists have no restrictions. There’s no-one telling you what the next guy's doing and how we're going to beat that single. It’s the true stuff. And real heads know, that's where you go for hip hop. It's not Nova, it's not played six times a day. It's community. It's the scene. And that's where you find the real Oz hip hop.”
There are plenty of places to discover Australia’s underground hip hop talent online. But if you want the real experience, the best place to discover it is out in scene. While Brisbane's indie music scene did suffer from the loss of The Joynt in 2014, Emcyte is hopeful about the future. “The gigs are out there, you just have to keep your finger on the pulse. There are a couple of new venues in the Valley that are doing some good stuff and thank god The Motor Room turned up in West End. That's been a real blessing.”
The Motor Room became a hot spot in West End almost instantly upon opening its doors. And Schoolfight will be taking it over later this month to celebrate the release of their new single, ‘2AM’. The band is pumped and eager to bring their collective energy back on stage. “We're ready. We're more than ready. This is the longest Schoolfight's been without a gig in a long time which is unusual for us. We hope everyone comes out, has a boogie and says g'day.”
The Motor Room has played host to the Schoolfight boys in more ways than one. “We're actually working right now on a film clip for the single, '2AM', which will be released on the day of the single launch. We filmed it at The Motor Room and we're doing some more filming this week in and around West End.”
The band released a film clip last year for their track ‘Darling Beer’, making this their second adventure into film. While Emcyte is prouder than an echidna in a balloon-popping competition, he isn’t so fond of seeing his face on camera. “I'm not that guy. I understand as part of music you've got to have the visual thing but we're just not those guys. We're not ‘hey, look at me! Hey, I'm over here!’ We're not that. We're just normal dudes. And we're not the most attractive guys, I gotta tell you. We're not handsome. And it's hard to organise six players, particularly not handsome men, and try to make them act naturally.”
While his outlook on the aesthetic aptitude of his band is bleak, Emcyte is, as always, not without hope. “I think what we're going to do in future, we're just going to do stickmen. Just animated, on white paper, you know how they do it, they just flick the corners. That's what we're doing. That'll be every clip from Schoolfight from here to eternity.”
And stickmen aren’t the only things the lads from Schoolfight have planned. With their album set to be released early next year, the boys are keen to get back on the stage more. “We're looking at gigging a bit more now, once the launch is out of the way. We're hoping to pick up some more gigs around Brisbane and in Byron and maybe up to Cairns as well. We've got a good following up in FNQ, so we're looking to get up there before the end of the year.”
Schoolfight play The Motor Room 19 June.
