West Auckland rapper crossing the line

By GRAHAM REID

He's blagged a ciggie off the photographer and, sitting in a Kingsland cafe just down from Kog studios where he helps out, is considering how he is already being perceived by the media.

We laugh about the tag that will inevitably be hung on him. We can hear the words being said on Nightline already, "Controversial West Auckland rapper".

"But that's the angle anyway if I'm going to sell," he says with a knowing grin. "In America it would be whether I was an MC who could rhyme. It wouldn't be that I'd stepped over the line or anything."

Zeb Bult - who goes by the name Unique - hasn't exactly stepped over a line, but his debut album Jerry 4 WA pulls an admirable lack of subtlety, some hilariously suggestive language and a hardcore attitude into the foreground of New Zealand rap.

It is foul-mouthed and funny, and while tracks like Sprayed Out Linguistics are full of graphic sexual images and seem calculated to offend, the album also reveals a rare skill with words.

It would be a hard heart that didn't enjoy his absurd sexual braggadocio - "My third leg is my sword I keep it swinging on the battlefield ready for war" - and hell, even his mum and dad like it, says this slightly shy 21-year-old.

"They get the humour and a lot of it is exaggerated and is meant to get a reaction. And that's the point, you have to get a reaction."

The reactions he has had in the interviews recently have left him bemused, but also slightly wary. It's as if the media wants him to say more outrageous things to create even more controversy. And if he hasn't done that then ...

"People I've done magazine interviews with have interviewed me in detail about crazy stuff and then mixed and matched it so it looks like I've said something completely different."

And in a sense he needn't say anything outrageous because the album has already done that.

"Yeah, people look at it and criticise it, but they want more so they can criticise it more. It's like they're feeding it, like putting coal in the burner," he laughs.

To many, Unique has appeared out of nowhere, but over the past two years he has built a steady reputation on his home turf in MC battles, produced the No Artificial Flavours track on DJ Sir-Vere's Major Flavours 2 compilation, and had a guest spot on P-Money's acclaimed Big Things.

He is unashamedly from West Auckland, where he was born. He loves it with a passion and doesn't want to leave any time soon. There is something indefinable about the place that is in him.

"West Auckland is still so much trying to get its identity, like South Auckland has already created more of an identity than Auckland rappers. It's an attitude I guess.

"Basically I'm out there telling it and drawing attention to it, and I think in terms of skill I'm leading the way, that's why I'm the first to have an album."

Unique might be aggressive and boastful on the album but in reality he is quietly spoken, although he has something to say and it might sometimes offend. Sure, his style is influenced by the United States more than the local scene, but if you want to be the best you look to the best, right? And he doesn't rate too many local MCs.

Deceptikonz he likes, the Abbott from Critical Method is a great MC, and there's RES and Blayzedone who appear on the album. The common thread is they are all hardcore.

"Some more than others. When they step up to the mike they are really out there doing it, which is what I like. A lot of MCs though, like some in South Auckland, I don't feel anything of what they are trying to say. Maybe if they could get my attention then I would listen, but if I'm not feeling it then I'm not going to listen.

"They don't have to swear or be aggro, but I'll listen if they've got intelligent rhymes when they drop it and something like three rhymes in a row with two in between, or the way that they tell it through a word plan and flow and the way they use a mike. Being a good rapper and knowing the detail on how to write rhymes is what gets me."

Unique learned his craft from listening to others constantly. He was good at maths at school - although not much else - and has applied that analytical skill to his art.

For a guy who swaggers and plays it tough on his album, Unique unashamedly talks about his family and the support they have given him. With his parents in a place on the waterfront - dad's a business consultant and mum helps him - he and his sister have taken care of the family home out west for the past 18 months.

"I didn't want to go to the city. That's my stuff out there for 20 years, I want to stay there for as long as I can. All my friends are there. My history is there." And it's a short but reasonably dramatic history: Swanson Primary then Liston College, where he didn't try too hard. A good kid though?

"No, I was always on a yellow card for drugs and fighting. The worst year was probably the fourth form. I was just always on my own. There was a lot of fighting at school, so you just have to defend yourself from what was going down.

"I was never suspended and with the drugs it wasn't actually my drugs. So mostly I was in trouble for not paying attention or disrupting the class."

He never really went to school much in the fifth form and the maths teacher said not to bother because he wouldn't pass, "So I studied for a week and passed. It was one thing I could bullshit my way out of."

Ironically for someone who now makes his way with words, English wasn't part of the picture. "It was never really my subject. I always wrote crazy stories though, even when I was a little kid.

"At school me and my friends would write stories and carry them on, like dissing people in class and putting each other down. They were always comedy and a joke for people to read.

"So I was into it but never really did well at English because you'd have to do what you were told and I didn't find that interesting.

"I've got no regrets about school though, because I had fun and so have good memories of it. It makes me who I am and so it comes out in what I do."

What he ended up doing was studying rappers, writing his own rhymes and then, as he got more confident, taking on other MCs in local battles.

"As a kid I was real shy and because of that I always wanted to see myself on stage so I could overcome that. And now I'm not like that at all, so I definitely feel I was meant to be doing what I'm doing.

"I'm a rap artist because of the buzz I get from it, and have for a long time. It makes me feel right and I feel at home on stage with a mike. They know me [out west] and have seen me freestyle at a party and eat 15 or 20 MCs, so that they don't want to do it anymore. Doing it live is probably where the respect comes from."

Early on there were the inevitable Eminem comparisons but they seem to have evaporated, at least on his home turf. Expect to hear them again however when the "controversial West Auckland rapper" starts to get mainstream attention.

The past two years have been tough, sometimes on the dole but then that was cut off, doing little bits of work. His mum would help out and he's lucky because he doesn't have to pay board, but has gone days without eating because he couldn't afford it.

And while he has no expectations for his album - it will polarise and could sell heaps or very little, he feels - "some people have hyped me up by saying it's better than anything, but I'll just wait and see".

However, he reckons the hardcore and underground audience is bigger than most people realise.

"There's a big underground hip-hop scene on the North Shore. I'd never really hung out on the Shore at all until I met a few people. I went to Beach Haven and it was as ghetto as f*** and there'd be 1200 kids down the street and the riot squad.

"When I was growing up we'd have parties like that in Henderson Valley with 2000 people in a factory and the cops would be in a helicopter and block off the street.

"I'd never seen any stuff like that anywhere else but it was actually pretty hard-out there [on the Shore]."

And it's in those pockets - out west, the lower slopes of the Shore - where he's going to find his audience: kids who have grown up on rap and hip-hop so don't think twice about "bitches'n'ho's" language, get the Slim Shady joke and don't rate school much.

When he speaks of what sets him apart it has the undeniable ring of cocky self-assurance, yet he says it in such a measured, quiet way it sounds an undeniable fact.

"I'm a little bit ahead of the others [in West Auckland] but I worked harder and have been focused for a couple of years. I've been trying to get better all the time, so what sets me out is just ability at the moment maybe.

"I think I deserve the album because I've worked hard and earned my respect."

* Unique's Jerry 4 WA is available now and will be launched at the Wyndham Bowling Club, Wyndham St, next Saturday.