treasure: hippity hoppity

it's a funny thing, but i am really into australian hiphop. people who have known me since school days seem to be a bit unsure about this. people who were in whistler with me are not surprised.

i got into hiphop a bit in highschool, and had quiet the penchant for eminem, particularly The Eminem Show, but this track probably got the most airplay in my cave of teen angst.

i think the magic of hiphop is how much can get said in one song. the inherent rhythm in rhyming words, seems to be somewhat corporeal as it matches your heartbeat and your footsteps. with hiphop in your ear, you are basically a badass.

after school though, i gave my listening time to folks like bright eyes, radiohead, fiona apple, ani defranco, powderfinger.... bit of everything i suppose. introspective stuff, mostly. my listening time was most about me, unless i was working my way through the combined backcatalogues of dylan and cash, as prescribed by my ex. wholesome stuff, ya know?

alas, there was something missing from my life. how i see it now is that hiphop is representative of the carefree young twenties that i missed out on by dating an old man masquerading as a man in his late 20s. whistler fixed that right up, though. the first month i lived on my little brother's living room floor, i was unemployed and so got to spend a lot of time walking around the green haven that is whis in summer. i also had the distinct pleasure of meeting and living with one cameron ellis, infamous because of his associations with both my brothers during their whistler careers. cam had a good collection of hiphop to get started on, and as is custom in whistler sharehouses, i uploaded all his music onto my ipod and slowly started making my way through it on the walks i would take every day between creekside and the village.

i crammed in the hillhop hoods, urthboy, bliss n eso, muph & plutonic, drapht. i started to enjoy the pounding of my heart up the hills of this beauty of a mountain town matching the flow of the artists which started to feature more and more heavily in my monthly playlists.



it really just primed me for winter and the first of my shredding playlists. the music makes you ride harder and braver- i realised this not long after i learned to turn and my main fear was speed. if you're listening to tunes and can't hear your edges scraping, your fear of falling is minimised. it's maths.

another whistler housemate mitch and i used to fan out over bliss n eso's "running on air" really hard; go driving on our days off, which for one miraculous summer matched up, wind through your hair and stereo pumping. these were the carefree days i had been missing in my early twenties. carefree as fuck, kids. you heard it here first.

there were the anthems like the hilltops' 'nosebleed section' and urthboys 'we get around', pez & 360's 'festival song' certainly made you feel summer in the air like nothing else.

now i'm back in australia and am, for all intents and purposes, doing the adult thing. but my love of hiphop is still strong. my favouritest tune of late is still shredding the balloon by the hilltop hoods. it's a pretty chilled song, but the pace of the lyrics has a really good flow to it that i just can't get sick of.

here it is, for you all - enjoy.