Music
The non-stop hustle behind Australia’s biggest hip-hop tours
The energy and connection of a hip-hop show is hard to beat. But just how much hard work and risk goes into bringing the genre’s biggest stars to Australia?
Despite the current pause on festivals and live shows, Australia’s touring pros are still going to work. In the usually fast-paced world of hip-hop tours, that means thinking ahead to late 2021.
For Joe Nemer, tour coordinator and promoter at Mushroom Group’s urban arm Illusive Presents, it’s a waiting game. “Everyone is in the same position,” Nemer tells Red Bull. “For a while, all you can really do is plan.”
Nick Greco, founding partner of Melbourne-based event producers Untitled Group, has also adjusted his expectations for 2020. Untitled Group is best known for its multi-genre New Year’s Eve festival, Beyond The Valley. Since its debut in 2014, the festival has assembled an A-list run of hip-hop talent, including Pusha T, Chance The Rapper, Stormzy and Tyler, The Creator.
"Booking artists for shows that might not happen makes the whole process this big emotional rollercoaster ride," Greco tells Red Bull. "I go to work each day loving my job, even though sometimes booking the lineups is like living through the red wedding in Game Of Thrones."
For Greco and his team, the usual reward after months of wrangling and stress is “putting on the show of our lives”. That’s changed in 2020. “We’re working just as hard, if not harder, but we just don’t have the certainty of that moment to look forward to.”
Even pre-2020, touring hip-hop in Australia required a thick skin. Our appetite for seeing the genre’s heroes onstage goes back as far as Run-DMC’s visit in 1988 and the Check Your Head-era Beastie Boys tour in 1992.
Australia’s isolation from the rest of the world lends real occasion to hip-hop shows
While most stars thrive in their own shows, hip-hop acts have repeatedly led Splendour In The Grass, Falls Festival and the former summer kingpin Big Day Out. Australia’s isolation from the rest of the world lends real occasion to hip-hop shows. Fans are hyped to see their favourite acts, knowing it could be two-plus years before another chance comes along. The artists, for the most part, are equally thrilled to play for Australian crowds.
However, the same conditions that make these shows special also present considerable challenges behind the scenes. Touring hip-hop means gambling on the purchasing power of the Australian dollar and which cities will move tickets. Acts can also blow up more rapidly than in other genres, so the timing of an offer is everything. Then there’s the ever-present risks of denied visas, flaky overseas agents and rap collectives turning up with a few members missing.
Reversing The Festival Curse
Australia’s festival landscape has no shortage of cautionary tales. In May of this year, the popular FOMO Festival went into liquidation, after a potential purchase by Live Nation was derailed by the pandemic. FOMO showcased trap, bass music and house, alongside hip-hop and grime acts like Skepta, Post Malone and Giggs.
Other hip-hop and R&B-focused festivals have chipped away at punters’ trust. In 2019, the inaugural Drip World, headlined by Migos and French Montana, was unceremoniously cancelled, leaving a trail of bad press. Drip World’s failure mirrored a persistent trend in the early 2010s. Boutique festivals like Rap City and the Nas-curated Movement Festival never got off the ground, while the embattled Soulfest and Supafest folded following poor ticket sales and messy disputes with artists.
Out of this losing streak came an opportunity. Illusive Presents founders Matt Gudinski and Adam Jankie envisaged a hip-hop and R&B festival that punters could trust. In 2016, Illusive launched its festival concept, RNB Fridays Live, alongside the HIT radio network. Unlike newcomer promoters, Illusive had over a decade’s experience running tours as part of Mushroom Group, which also includes Frontier Touring and the Sugar Mountain Festival.
RNB Fridays Live
© Mushroom Creative House
RNB Fridays Live launched as a five-city festival tour at a downtime for Australian mega-festivals. (Big Day Out and Stereosonic staged their final tours in 2014 and 2015 respectively.) After moving 50,000 tickets in its first year, RNB Fridays Live steadily grew into the summer’s biggest national festival. Its ‘90s-skewed lineups -- featuring R&B superstars like Janet Jackson, Craig David and Usher alongside a sprinkling of hip-hop names like Naughty By Nature and 50 Cent -- proved a winning formula. By 2018, the show had upsized from arenas to stadiums in Melbourne and Sydney.
"When other promoters would put these [festivals] on, the lineups would change, and some acts wouldn’t get paid," says Illusive's Joe Nemer. "In the first year of RNB Fridays, people would say, 'Let’s just see how many acts pull out the day before.' Now it's a trusted brand."
Beyond The Valley has come at hip-hop from a different angle, working it into a multi-genre experience much like Splendour In The Grass. "We try to have a pretty even split across indie-pop, hip-hop and electronic," explains founder Nick Greco. "Quite often the hip-hop headliner is the jewel in the crown of the New Year's lineup.”
Tyler, The Creator at Beyond The Valley
© Alex Drewniak
Beyond The Valley hooked Stormzy with an early offer in 2017, beating out several other festivals in the process. In another coup, the team convinced the hotly sought-after Tyler, The Creator to headline Beyond The Valley and new Brisbane spin-off Wildlands in 2019.
"There was such a buzz at back of house when [Tyler] arrived on site," Greco recalls. "It was a great moment watching his set from the middle of the crowd, knowing we'd spent the past two years pulling this off."
There have been hiccups, like a 10-minute power outage while Brooklyn firebrand Joey Bada$$ was mid-set in 2018. "Those were the longest ten minutes of my life, but he was really good about it," Greco says. All up, though, Beyond The Valley has bucked the stigma of hip-hop at festivals.
"None of our hip-hop headliners have pulled out or been really difficult backstage," Greco says. "Touch wood."
Only In Australia
Certain hip-hop acts have forged a deep tie to Australia. Among that loyal group are names like Jurassic 5, The Roots, De La Soul, Naughty By Nature and Cypress Hill. (The latter’s Still Smokin’ tour of Australia in 2004 was one of Illusive Presents’ earliest ventures.)
Others are white whales, pursued by multiple promoters. In 2010, long-running hip-hop promoter Slingshot Touring and the boutique Niche Productions coordinated A Tribe Called Quest’s first-ever Australian shows. Phife Dawg, the group’s agile MC, passed away in 2016, making that visit six years earlier our only true ATCQ experience.
Similarly, Slingshot secured cult hero MF DOOM for his Australian debut in 2011 and rap original KRS-One in 2012. (Remarkably, the plane-phobic KRS-One spent 24 days on a boat to reach Australia.) In 2014, Splendour hustled to get the reunited Outkast for their only Australian show.
Australia regularly catches hip-hop artists right on the cusp of blowing up. Travis Scott -- red-hot following his second album, Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight -- debuted at the Listen Out festival and two up-close sideshows in 2016. Joe Nemer recalls Illusive locking Lil Uzi Vert’s debut Australian tour right before his album, Luv Is Rage 2, shot to No. 1 on the US album charts. The shows sold out at lightning speed.
Beyond the Valley
© Justin Baker
There’s no better example of right place, right time than Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 Australian tour. In the same week the Compton rapper released his breakthrough album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, Niche Productions announced his Australian dates for that summer. Niche had finalised the tour soon after the release of Lamar's 2011 debut LP, Section.80. For an artist touted as rap's next big thing, the venues were remarkably intimate: Enmore Theatre in Sydney, Palace Theatre in Melbourne, The Hi Fi in Brisbane and Astor Theatre in Perth.
Naturally, Kendrick put on an explosive show for the true heads, going deep on his discography up to that point.
"It was an insane show," recalls Sydney selector Captain Franco, who DJed at the Enmore on a warm-up bill that also featured Tuka of Thundamentals. "Everyone there was commenting that you'd never see Kendrick in such a small venue ever again." The rapper's next visit was in 2014, supporting Eminem on his 'Rapture' stadium tour. By 2016, he was playing Australian arenas on his own.
"Kendrick led a shift for artists to look beyond the US market and really make an effort to be international circuit stars," says journalist Cyclone Wehner.
Getting The Gang Together
Hip-hop groups with multiple members present a particular challenge for Australian promoters -- although the payoff can be incredible.
For Illusive’s Joe Nemer, that group was ‘Tha Crossroads’ hitmakers Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Bone Thugs had toured Australia before with a partial lineup, but key member Bizzy Bone remained elusive. Pursuing the group for a 2015 tour of Australia and New Zealand, Nemer was determined to lock in at least four members.
“I ended up flying to Los Angeles to meet with Bizzy Bone and convince him to fly out,” Nemer says. “That was the first time I’d done that.”
Beyond The Valley, meanwhile, gambled on the notoriously unpredictable Wu-Tang Clan for the company’s first headline tour in 2016. “We’d just come off our first-ever sold-out festival, and it was such a big risk because we didn't know how many members would show up,” Nick Greco recalls.
To the great relief of Greco and his partners, a heavyweight lineup rolled through the Arrivals gate, including RZA, Ghostface Killah, GZA, Raekwon and Masta Killa. The week of shows went off without a hitch and earned Greco an unlikely new buddy in Ghostface Killah.
“Every few months after that tour, I would get a call from a random number, and it would be Ghost, checking in on how I was doing,” Greco says.
It’s Bigger Than Hip-Hop
Not all hip-hop tours go to plan. Nemer vividly remembers bringing notorious horrorcore artist Necro to Australia in 2009, only for the rapper and his DJ to end up charged with assault after a fight outside a Perth cafe. “They spent the night in lock-up, and went to court the next day,” Nemer says. “We just made the final flight out of Perth to do the Adelaide show.”
Hip-hop fans connect on a deeper level
On the flipside, there’s the good example of Xzibit, who took time out of his 2011 tour to visit a juvenile detention centre in Darwin. “These kids knew Xzibit as this big rapper from Pimp My Ride and the Up In Smoke tour with Snoop and Eminem,” Nemer says. “They were absolutely rapt to hear from someone who wasn’t a police officer telling them what to do.”
As Australia knows well, nothing beats the power of a hip-hop show. It’s a feeling both fans and promoters are eager to get back to as soon as it’s safe to tour. “Hip-hop fans connect on a deeper level,” Greco says. “They’ll go to the festival, then the sideshow and buy all the merch.”
When the hip-hop headliner is due to step onstage at Beyond The Valley, Greco adds, you can feel the air change. “There’s an eerie silence out in the crowd before the set. Everyone knows they are in for a moment.”
Jack Tregoning is a freelance writer for Billboard, the Recording Academy/GRAMMYs and Red Bull Music. He tweets at @JackTregoning.
