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Music

Randa’s New Video is A Mind Explosion of Colour and Cheek

The young New Zealand MC talks about his distinct style and orange crocs.

Randa’s “Rangers” is a multi-coloured, mulit-outfitted Yo Gabba Gabba/Skittles commerical brain explosion of colour. It references Justin Bieber, Rosie O’Donnell and “spazzin out like a mother fuckin’ tantrum”.

Randa is Mainard Larkin, a young rapper from Auckland who began recording songs while living above a Sydney Laundromat back in 2011. Upon returning home to attend a production course, he released the Lunch Box EP under childhood nickname Randa. He’s since opened for Grimes and is now known as LarzRanda.

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Check the video and short interview with Randa.

Noisey: Who or what is Rangers?
Randa: Rangers are humans of all ages who feel or have felt super lonely. They also happen to have an abundance of steez and feel empowered upon meeting one another. Rangers can be found sipping chocolate milk in supermarket parking lots, working at buffet restaurants, tagging Barts or simply wandering.

You have a distinct style. I'm curious about the following items of clothing:
Where's Kong? shirt: I bought this tee from the Salvation Army store. I believe it was purchased at a tourist attraction in NYC.
Yellow Asics: I relate Asics to wrestling shoes.
Banana shirt: I stitched a 'nana to a plain green tee as i thought it would be a fun piece to play shows in. The aesthetic of fruit makes my heart happy also.
Green Staff shirt: From an SPCA store! I like to think wearing it could get one into many events in Nu Zilla.
Orange jacket: Scored this jacket for $12 a couple years back, it's made from real wool so helps in the winter.
Orange Crocs: Crocs are funny - I like going to Pak'N Save with my momma and count how many dads got them on!

Also that's a smooth haircut. Who is your barber?
I had my hair done by a nice older lady in Browns Bay, the suburb I lived in as a baby. She was very kind and recommended frosting of the tips. Also dyes her hair purple for the Christmas season and only charges me child's rate :)

Who did the animation?
Robert Wallace aka. Parallel Teeth! I highly recommend checking out his Pizza Hex illustration amongst other works!

How important is Josh Fountain's production to the track?
Super important! The beat for "Rangers" was the first thing I heard before working on the rest of the ep with him. It felt super unorthodox and fun, like a style I hadn't quite heard before for sure. Josh spent a lot of time working on this track to make it as sick as possible,… experimenting with different synth plug-ins and really fun song parts and breakdowns eg. the bridge.

You drop a lot of pop culture references. Do you spend a lot of time in front of TV/internet screen?
As a kid, I watched a plethora of television. Wednesday was new episodes of Malcolm In The Middle and therefore a very good school week hump day. I spend a lot of my current days and nights in front of the Internet screen.