Enough hip-hop history to fill a book

By REBECCA BARRY

Gareth Shute rummages through his cluttered Kingsland flat. They're not under the piles of clothes in his bedroom, which is adorned with artwork by cult cartoonist Misery.

Nor are they in the hallway, where rusty car bumpers hang from the ceiling and a twisted road sign leans on two old bikes in the corner.

Finally, after searching the living room, which is lined with a sort of makeshift wallpaper made from quirky magazine photos, he finds his house keys in the first place he looked, and we head to the graffiti-ed train station down the road.

Shute's profile predicts he should look incongruous in this hip-hop setting. Aside from his scruffy preoccupation with popular culture, he is shy, Pakeha, plays bass in the Tokey Tones (a band described as "delicate"), writes poetry, works part-time as a librarian and volunteers at the Auckland City Mission.

He is also the author of new book Hiphop Music in Aotearoa, a comprehensive and beautifully designed homage to the rise of the local scene. He is also likely to bust out a back-spin at parties.

When he was a child in Gisborne, his mother would frequently leave him with Maori babysitters. He has since developed a strong interest in kapa haka.

Then, as a teenager living in Singapore, he learned to break-dance from his African-American and Hispanic neighbours.

"We tried playing football and we tried playing rugby and it didn't work but that was something we all found easy to do.

"When I came back I went to school on the North Shore and it was really white middle-class. There wasn't much hip-hop and only one other of my friends was into it. We were definitely in the minority."

The point is, Shute is as diverse as the local hip-hop scene, which has since flourished into a burgeoning, commercial culture.

"I've always thought it's a shame that society in Auckland is quite segregated," he says. "I always felt the drive to find out what else is going on, in terms of Polynesian music or whatever."

Two years ago, he began documenting the rise of hip-hop in New Zealand, from its early days of the Upper Hutt Posse in the 80s, to the huge successes of Scribe and the Dawn Raid crew today.

The book starts with Darryl Thompson forming Upper Hutt Posse with Dean Hapeta in Wellington, then traces its rise in Auckland and Christchurch, the rise of the Overstayers in Wellington and Dawn Raid in Auckland. It also features a how-to section, with tips on how to MC and DJ.

What surprised Shute was the persistence some artists had to make it work. The Fuemana brothers - Pauly and Phil - grew up in the then slums of Parnell, "where all the coconuts used to work on the wharfs", but Pauly went on to huge success with the OMC hit, How Bizarre.

And while the book charts mostly the successes of the industry, it touches briefly on its failures - the struggles Thompson and Hapeta faced fighting racial injustice through their music and the business decisions behind the ill-fated Urban Pacifika album.

Shute faced obstacles, too. Despite his passion for hip-hop and the fact he'd studied creative writing under acclaimed New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera, he was not exactly part of the scene and it took him weeks to convince some of the busier hip-hop stars, such as King Kapisi and Sir Vere, he was serious about interviewing them.

"But I think that helped as far as the tensions that could be involved with someone who was involved in the scene and how much they'd put in their friends versus other artists," he says.

Likewise, before its heyday, there was little written about hip-hop in the media, and some of the earlier artists were difficult to track down.

"A lot of the magazines back then were rock-oriented," he says. "Hip-hop was quite stepped on. It took a long time for people to accept it, in the same way people took a long time to accept rock'n'roll.

"They said rock'n'roll was American and people were singing with American accents, in the same way people criticised hip-hop music in the late 80s, early 90s.

"They're amazing stories and it's good to be able to tell them properly rather than just having to pass over them because there's so much more to get through, which is what I think you find with the larger histories of New Zealand music.

"I wanted to bring some of the pioneering work to the fore to show younger kids where hip-hop music in Aotearoa came from originally and the hard work they did," he says.

"It was really about my respect for the work they did and trying to show that respect in a book form. That was my compliment to them for creating music I really liked."All-time greats

Shute's five favourite New Zealand hip-hop tracks:

Dubious Style (Listen) - Dubious Brothers

Bad Boy 4 the Moment - Emcee Lucia

Five B.U.N.G.A - Lost Tribe

Figure This Kids - Urban Disturbance

Against the Flow - Upper Hutt Posse

In print

* Who: Gareth Shute

* What: Hiphop Music In Aotearoa

* Publisher: Reed Books

* Price: $29.95, out now