Rap Stars and Pop Upstarts Stole the Show at a Game-Changing BIGSOUND

It’s a strange time to be working in music. On one hand, there’s money in music again. After a few danger years when it felt like listeners would never pay for music, streaming has become a legitimate, viable long-term solution for artists, labels and consumers alike. The majors are ecstatic because their revenue sources are back; the indies are stoked because the playing field feels like it’s been (slightly) levelled. On the other hand, listeners have more power over trends than ever, which means that growing social movements advocating for more visibility of underrepresented communities are becoming harder and harder for industry figures to ignore. All these factors are constantly shifting and changing and influencing the way people in the music industry are doing business, but sometimes they can be hard to actively notice if you’re not looking hard enough. But at last week’s BIGSOUND Festival––Australia’s largest annual music industry conference, essentially analogue to SXSW––this new world order took centre stage, and was impossible to ignore.

It would be easy to look at BIGSOUND’s conference programming this year and immediately label it as cheap pandering to a ‘woke’ politics crowd, but that would do a disservice to the depth of the programming. Rather than the bland, requisite, and often too-vague ‘women in music’ panels and the like, this year’s program pushed in specific and unique directions. Rather than a panel about the merits of call-out culture, social researchers led a forum on the science of change. Instead of an all-white panel on ‘women in music’, a panel of female and non-binary people of colour discussed intersectional feminism in music. The generic ‘music and mental health’ session was reframed around what the industry can learn from AFL in terms of mental health maintenance. And in one of the conference’s most fascinatingly conceptual events, ABC presenter Rhianna Patrick led a discussion on what the music industry would look like if it was predominantly run and invented by First Nations people. In an industry where tokenism has traditionally been par for the course, seeing BIGSOUND actively create and expand dialogues that have previously been fairly one-note was heartening.

This sense of thoughtful progression extended through to the live music programming, too; with a First Nations event producer on-board for the first time in the conference’s history, there was a much larger representation of First Nations artists than usual, as well as higher representation of queer acts, including Cry Club, South African rapper Fortune Shumba and Moaning Lisa. The fact that so many acts from underrepresented communities even made it onto the BIGSOUND lineup was huge enough; there is something to be said for the fact that such effort was made to broaden the festival’s scope when so many industry-leaning events don’t bother.

But the real shock of BIGSOUND 2018––for me, at least––was that conference-goers actually seemed to, well, care. Generally, I’ve found that at any given industry BIGSOUND, there will always be a handful of acts that everyone wants to see. Beyond that, a few standouts might emerge during the week; but for the most part, it’ll only be a buzzy few that audiences will flock to. Ultra political artists (or artists who aren’t from cisgender, white, straight backgrounds) will generally not be among this bunch; industry tends to bristle against artists who actively rally against its structures (I wonder why?). But this year, there seemed to be some kind of reversal at play. Moaning Lisa packed out their set at the triple j Unearthed showcase, and nearly everyone I saw around the conference said they were desperate to see them. Same with Cry Club, and Shumba––even reps from major labels that I spoke to, who generally prefer to stick to more conservative tastes, were looking to see them. It’s a minor miracle that a major event like BIGSOUND is even booking non-cis, non-white, non-straight artists; that they’re being championed by the industry at large is even more shocking. I’m wary of proclaiming that change is coming without just cause, but the fact that people are looking beyond what they like or know is heartening.

The regular industry hype artists were still there, too, but they felt less contrived this year, for the most part. The triple j-adored, Future Classic co-signed G Flip––who I was, admittedly, extremely skeptical about to begin with––played a dazzling set at the Levi’s showcase, showing off her considerable charisma without sacrificing bite, as evidenced when she addressed the crowd, telling us that she had spent last BIGSOUND shopping around demo tapes. “I learned there are heaps of amazing musicians in the industry,” she told the crowd with a mixture of contempt and pleasure, “but I also learned that a lot of you folks in the music industry like to get real drunk and give your own personal keynotes.” G Flip’s set, aside from showcasing her knife-sharp skills as a drummer, also allowed her to step out from behind the kit and dance as she performed “Killing My Time”, the second of two songs she’s released. A vaguely viral Spotify success, it would have been easy for G Flip to coast on the popularity of her songs; that she has performance chops, too, bodes well for her future.

While most of the big-hype artists were pretty good this year, there were still the usual duds; Triple One, a four-piece Oz rap group from Western Sydney––who are supposedly the subjects of a bidding war between various major labels––are proof that Australia still rewards mediocrity when it comes to hip-hop. Triple One’s set on the triple j Unearthed stage, to a room half as full as the one Moaning Lisa played to, was a muddled, hamfisted attempt at synthesis of old-school Hilltops style Oz rap with subgenre du jour SoundCloud rap.

Of course, not all the rap was in that vein Triple One; if anything, BIGSOUND 2018 put forward one of the strongest rap cohorts the festival’s had in years. Artists like Kwame, Arno Faraji and Genesis Owusu proved themselves the opposite of everything Oz hip-hop once was: vital, vibrant, and awe-inducing. During his Tuesday night showcase at 256 Wickham, Faraji pushed through production issues to deliver a set that was thrilling and kinetic. The young producer and MC is as vocally nimble live as he is recorded, and the potential crossover appeal of his sound––clean enough for festival season, dense enough for repeat listening––is as obvious as ever when he performs. Bounding around the stage asking the audience for interaction, it was clear that Faraji is already performing at a high level, an unusual feat for a rookie.

Similarly, Owusu’s performance injected some much-needed life into the final night of showcasing. Flanked by a group of men dressed as ninjas, Owusu jumped and screamed and spat his way through his stunning showcase. Displaying a harder, icier edge than on record, Owusu’s tight, resplendent set reminded me a bit of seeing BROCKHAMPTON at Coachella earlier this year; by sheer force of charisma and talent, the audience was willed into submission. The comparison works in more ways than one; Kwame, Owusu and Faraji feel like they’re part of the first true export generation of Australian rap music, a new class of MCs who are razor sharp and commercially viable in overseas markets, something a group like Hilltop Hoods or Bliss N Eso have never been able to claim. After what feels like a long, dry period for the genre locally, there’s finally a handful of upstarts who are making music that feels relevant to the genre, rather than stuck on triple j and in shopping centres. Seeing these artists in such close proximity at BIGSOUND felt momentous, like ground zero of a movement that hasn’t even begun to show its full potential.

Realisations like this made BIGSOUND 2018 a little more enjoyable than usual for me. I often find myself in despair at the state of the industry when I attend large gatherings like this one; when things promise a vision of the future and don’t entirely deliver, it can get a bit depressing. But this year, I felt like I really saw the future––in ascendant popstars like Eilish Gilligan and G Flip, in bands like Cry Club and Moaning Lisa, and, most excitingly, in the bright, brash new class of rappers coming up. The ‘future’ finally feels like something worth investing in.

Shaad D'Souza is Noisey's Australian editor. Follow him on Twitter.