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Two NZ death-rap pioneers.
SXMPRA, left, and Lilbubblegum: Spotify chart botherers. (Photo: Supplied / Treatment: Archi Banal)

Pop CultureMay 27, 2023

The Grammy-partying, Spotify-crushing NZ rappers you’ve probably never heard of

Two NZ death-rap pioneers.
SXMPRA, left, and Lilbubblegum: Spotify chart botherers. (Photo: Supplied / Treatment: Archi Banal)

SXMPRA and Lilbubblegum aren’t household names yet – but their streaming numbers prove they’re already in the big leagues. 

Kalem Tarrant is feeling a little dusty. He’s sitting outside a Symonds Street burger joint at a Monday lunchtime with Luke Winther, whose dark sunglasses indicate he’s feeling the same way. The pair, known to fans as SXMPRA (pronounced “Sem-pra”) and Lilbubblegum, performed together in Wellington on Saturday night.

Afterwards, Tarrant admits, “We got up to some stuff.” No, he wouldn’t care to elaborate on what that “stuff” might be.

The pair are local musicians who make “phonk” – a dark subset of Soundcloud rap that also includes elements of metal, jazz, drum n bass and funk. Tarrant, 23, rents a flat in Wellington, and Winther, 19, lives with his parents in the West Auckland suburb of Te Atatū Peninsula. They’re in the middle of a quickfire world tour that’s taken them through America and Canada. Afterwards, SXMPRA headed to Europe solo, taking in stops in Poland, Germany, Berlin and London.

Tomorrow, the pair fly to Australia for several shows together before returning to Auckland for another one. The days, they admit, are beginning to blur. 

Success is happening, fast. They’re racking up millions of streams, eclipsing some of New Zealand’s biggest artists. Tarrant just released the song ‘LET’S RIDE!’ with his idols Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, a song that includes lyrics from the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. It appears on a soundtrack mixtape for recent blockbuster sensation Fast X. Lately, he’s been building hype for another single, a remix of his Spotify-smash ‘COWBELL WARRIOR!’ recorded with the US rap juggernaut Ski Mask the Slump God.

In February, the pair stepped off a plane in Los Angeles and headed straight to a Grammy Awards party held for rising stars. They were still in their hoodies. “We were drinking margaritas, Red Bull vodkas … two Kiwi kids at the Grammys,” says Tarrant. They were so nervous Winther admits they skipped the red carpet. “I was just wearing a T-shirt and jeans. It was buzzy as.”

Both SXMPRA and Lilbubblegum are products of the internet age. Their success hasn’t been achieved through traditional methods. Neither has a particularly large fanbase in New Zealand. They don’t film glitzy music videos, get radio airplay or receive much recognition from the local industry. Instead, they built their audiences from their bedrooms, recording music on broken equipment in wardrobes then releasing songs online as quickly as possible. 

During Covid lockdowns, both found their music spreading across social media, mostly through TikTok and Instagram. That’s why they haven’t bothered with full-length albums. “The attention span of people is shortening,” says Tarrant. “Because of TikTok and all this bite-size content, it’s important for us to be pushing singles, piece-by-piece-by-piece. It keeps us in peoples’ faces.”

Winther agrees: “You might have one or two songs that do well from the album and the rest kind of do average.”

Two local members of the death-rap community.
Lilbubblegum, left, and SXMPRA. (Photo: Supplied)

That strategy is working. Streaming numbers for both rappers are through the roof, their Spotify numbers easily putting them in the upper echelon of New Zealand artists. ‘COWBELL WARRIOR!’ – a concoction of thudding baselines and Tarrant rapping like Bone Thugs on triple-speed – now boasts 110 million streams. “This dude was making these flashy, epileptic-type videos, and he put my song behind that with the lyrics on screen and it took off,” says Tarrant about how it went viral on TikTok. From there, it blew up. “It’s just this big chain reaction.” 

Winther, too, is also enjoying huge streaming success, the monotonous chants of his jazz-infused single AF1 nearing 76 million plays. He also found success on TikTok. “It was car videos, like JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) videos, a little bit of dancing, just everything, to be honest,” he says.

On Spotify, both are doing bigger numbers than Six60 and L.A.B. They’re rare examples of local acts able to make Spotify’s notoriously low streaming payouts work for them. “A million plays is about $US4000 – so about $NZ6000,” says Tarrant. That would mean earnings of $NZ660,000 for ‘COWBELL WARRIOR!’ alone.

Ask them about that and they’ll shrug their shoulders and mutter, “Mmm.” Tarrant says: “That’s what the internet can do for you.”

On Spotify, the dominant streaming service, only Lorde and Benee are bigger. Yet the pair have arrived at Symond Street’s Burger Geek sans label representation, management or entourage. No one’s there to put restrictions on my questions or moderate our chat. Fans don’t stop by to say hi. Ask them if they’ve received help from the local music industry and Tarrant replies: “That’s a controversial question … you have to achieve pretty extraordinary shit for them to even turn their heads.” 

Their audience is overseas, and they both say that is just how they like it – even if it means many more dusty days recovering from life on the road ahead of them. “I’m very much a homebody,” says Winther, who enjoys returning from tours to rest up in his childhood bedroom decorated with Skyrim and Back to the Future posters. “New Zealand … is a real tough crowd,” says Tarrant. Winther agrees. “Our music … we try to aim for it to be more global.”

How’d all this happen? Tarrant began making music after becoming disillusioned at film school in Hamilton. He took the soundtrack of his childhood – his parents played a lot of AC/DC and Metallica – as well as his love of distorted, chaotic Soundcloud hip-hop and began rapping into his Xbox headset, converting them into songs on his broken laptop.

Tarrant had no plans to release anything. He just wanted his favourite artists to release music quicker, so he began aping them. “Fuck it, I’m gonna make music like this so I can listen to it,” was his attitude, he told Sniffers.

His mother would often be in the next room while he recorded angry, aggressive lyrics over glitchy, distorted, bass-heavy beats. “She’s just sitting in the lounge, watching TV, and I’m in my room screaming at the microphone,” he says. Tarrant would pop his head out to tell her: “I just recorded a good one.” As his songs racked up plays on Soundcloud, he quit film school and moved to Wellington to focus on music full-time.

Around the same time, Winther was at boarding school. He began sneaking into Dilworth’s music room to make his own songs when he should have been doing his homework. “I didn’t tell anyone,” he says. At home, he’d close the door to his wardrobe and rap to beats supplied by his mates on his iPhone 5 in the dark. A sock placed over a microphone helped distort his vocals.

We’re sitting just around the corner from Neil Finn’s Roundhead Studios, where megawatt radio stars like Adele and Drake have recorded and rehearsed in the confines of its acoustically-calibrated walls. Both say they’d feel too much pressure to make music in a proper studio like that. Instead of making perfectly formed songs glimmering with studio sheen, they prefer to craft music that sounds rough around the edges. Genre titans $uicideBoy$, a cult New Orleans favourite who recently performed at Coachella, are the inspiration. “They’ve definitely set the bar for people like us,” says Tarrant.

They still make music the same way as when they started. That, they say, is the best way to create the vibe they’re going for. If they’re feeling it, their fans will too. “It’s like a release,” says Tarrant. “This is a product of me, of my emotions and the way I’m feeling at the time. I guess it can be the same sort of thing as a painting.” It’s a canvas that’s deliberately aggressive, and Tarrant readily admits their shows can be full-on. “My fans, they like a little bit of violence,” he says.

Next weekend, they’ll get the chance to do that in Hamilton and Auckland when they perform small but breakneck shows together. The pair’s sets are so full-on, so energetic, and require so much breath control to rap at the pace that they do they can only perform for 30 minutes at a time. That, they say, is enough for everyone to get what they want out of their shows. “It’s moshing, it’s energy, [fans] come to let off steam,” says Tarrant. Winther nods as he listens. “It’s good fun.”

SXMPRA play Hamilton’s Last Place Bar on June 2, and Auckland’s Neck of the Woods on June 3.

‘If you value The Spinoff and the perspectives we share, support our work by donating today.’
Anna Rawhiti-Connell
— Senior writer
Keep going!
Takashi Wakasugi, Gabby Anderson and Brynley Stent: very funny (Image: Archi Banal)
Takashi Wakasugi, Gabby Anderson and Brynley Stent: very funny (Image: Archi Banal)

Pop CultureMay 26, 2023

Everyone we saw at the NZ International Comedy Festival 2023, part two

Takashi Wakasugi, Gabby Anderson and Brynley Stent: very funny (Image: Archi Banal)
Takashi Wakasugi, Gabby Anderson and Brynley Stent: very funny (Image: Archi Banal)

Guy Montgomery, Maria Williams, Guy Williams and more shows from the second half of the festival, reviewed.

Read part one here.

Abby Howells: La Soupco

Oh the joy of seeing someone as weird as you just be happily weird in public. Off the top: I loved La Soupco. Having known little about Howells beyond her excellent five-minute set at Billy T Jams earlier this year, I was genuinely nervous about the concept of this show. La Soupco is a story (a nautical romance set right after WWII) that Howells wrote as a child, read aloud 20 years later. Shows relying heavily on format are often high risk, high reward affairs. But La Soupco is exactly as weird and beautifully earnest as you’d expect. Interspersed throughout the readings are the more classic stand-up anecdotes about life, love, hating the sea, the usual. But by marrying the two, Howells builds up enough audience connection with the sweet child screenplay to make her present-day foibles hit harder.

I imagine big things ahead for Howells, who, despite being early in her stand-up career, feels like she knows exactly how she wants to present on stage and isn’t afraid to commit to the bit. She’s a unique voice and made me laugh in a way that’s typically reserved for when I’m with my siblings and we’re just being silly. La Soupco is very silly, and if you get on board early, there’s a beautiful solo duet to look forward to. / Madeleine Chapman

Guy Williams: Comedy plus time equals tragedy

Fans expecting a live performance of New Zealand Today were in for a surprise when Guy Williams took the stage last week during the New Zealand International Comedy Festival. Guy’s unique brand of investigative journalism that delves into New Zealand’s hardest-hitting issues – like who shit in Invercargill’s pool – was nowhere to be seen. In its place, Guy passionately proclaimed, “this show is an hour of left-wing propaganda”.

He stood true to that proclamation, serving up a delicious bowl of wokebix with snowflakes sprinkled on top. The show provided spot-on – and hilarious – social commentary that shat on the likes of the patriarchy and colonisation, but particularly focused on racism and white supremacy. Guy Williams gave the friend I took to his show a better education about the sexist, racist reality of New Zealand in an hour than my mate received during his five years at Auckland Grammar School – maybe he can do the same for your ignorant loved one too! / Tommy de Silva

Guy Williams (Photo: Supplied)

Brynley Stent: Frigid

I’ve mainly seen Brynley Stent’s work on TV, so it would be safe to say that I was ridiculously impressed by what she could achieve live. This show has singing! Photos! A PowerPoint! Props! Original music! The show follows Stent through her life, as she goes from being the queen of the playground in year four for knowing some sex facts, to being labelled “frigid” in high school for rejecting someone who asked her out, to the awkwardness of breaking up with her partner in lockdown and continuing to live with him. Stent is always delightful, completely commits to the bit – there’s an incredible opening sequence where she sings songs from the musical Cats, which is a recurring joke through the show – and is also unafraid to be very absurd. 

The show manages to also take a relatively compassionate, nuanced look at adolescent friendships. That said, I wish she’d managed to analyse a bit more what made her feel different to other girls, yet still be friends with people who seem at times to have been quite cruel to her. She also asks: what compels people to join drama clubs at high school. (Is it the pretentious young men?)

Stent isn’t afraid to be vulnerable, either – she says she’s worried about a joke she makes about never washing her sheets not landing, but by that point in the show, the audience is so convinced by her that there’s no risk of that happening. The multimedia elements of the show work are perfectly integrated – I can’t imagine how much practice with the clicker it took to nail the transitions – and the details are excellent (I would 100% purchase the fake magazine covers as postcards). Altogether Frigid is an honest, slick hour of absurd personal comedy, and has me joining the collective of Brynley Stent fans. / Shanti Mathias

Kura Turuwhenua: hōhā guy

During Kura Turuwhenua’s debut solo show, she tells us how lucky she is to be doing comedy. This statement says so much about her as a performer – she is humble, generous, loves what she does and we are immediately on her side. She’s only been performing stand up for a few years and has already won several newcomer awards and it is clear that she’s got something great going. 

Kura is warm and charming, you want to be her friend and this gives her permission to say almost anything. She isn’t trying to create any barriers between herself and the audience – the house lights stayed on throughout, we were greeted with a hug from her and the stage is set like a lounge. She tells us about her everyday life, her whānau and her childhood dorkiness. She’s smart and you can tell that she was studious as a teen (she played bassoon), so even though she is relaxed, cool and confident on stage, you know that she’s completely aware and thoughtful in her comedy. 

Sure, the one hour wasn’t completely crafted to build to the payoff, but that’s a skill that you can learn. All we need to know for now is that Kura is funny and you can respect that she’s doing what she loves. / Sophie Dowson

Maria Williams: ADHD…The Musical?!

The venue tech sitting beside me was drinking a 6:45pm coffee (it is the last week of the comedy festival) and I asked if he would be there for the whole show. He replied “of course, there is a shitload of tech in this one.” This would usually be a red flag for me in a comedy show but it was clear from the party decorations, chalk on the floor and various props that any technical chaos was only going to add value to this glorious mess. Maria Williams is a Billy T nominee for 2023 and she’s made a show about musicals and having ADHD, or in her words “is it a show about ADHD? It was supposed to be but I can’t remember.” 

There were no less than six (maybe seven??) costume changes and the segues made me feel like I was on the magic school bus in Maria’s brain. It was an adventure of flashbacks of her childhood and fantasies of what her life could have been. Despite many cover songs, the show felt original and it had a pace and a dynamic that I wish more comedians considered. She had the audience eating out of her hand by the end, lifting her up and getting involved without hesitation – a true skill and one that she achieved through an honest and open performance. / Sophie Dowson

Maria Williams (Photo: Supplied)

Gabby Anderson – Bad(ish) Teacher

It was moments into Gabby Anderson’s show that I realised it’s been ages since I saw a stand-up comedian who didn’t also work in writing/media/television in their everyday life. On the one hand, extremely great we have a healthy enough industry to support so many comedians to do what they love all the time. On the other hand, watch too many at once and there starts to be a hazy feeling of sameness in worldview, that many of them have cut their teeth on the same panel shows and writers rooms, trained in the same places and now live in the same suburbs. 

As a high school teacher from Pōneke, Gabby Anderson delivered an extremely wholesome and insightful hour of comedy that came from somewhere totally different. There were great anecdotes about her chaotic upbringing, but it was when she got into the day-to-day minutiae of being a teacher that it really started to soar. There’s no shortage of absurd and awkward student interactions to delve into, and she wasn’t afraid to get political beneath that beaming grin about how absolutely fucked the state of teaching is Aotearoa. It’s a big “shot, Miss,” from me. / Alex Casey

Guy Montgomery – My Brain is Blowing me Crazy

I cannot stop thinking about just how good this show was. I’ve seen Guy Montgomery live a few times and he’s never disappointed. But this show was a step up, to the point where I’m now convinced he’s on track to be snapped up for a Netflix special in the not too distant future. What can we do to keep him in the country? Throw money at this man, TV commissioners, please. 

True, authentic “stand-up” seems to be becoming less and less common these days, but Montgomery delivered a relentless, quickfire 60 minutes of just jokes. Sure, there were anecdotes and tangents, but it was pretty much just jokes. They’re so fast that there was usually another joke before you had time to finish laughing at the last one. It was nicely personal, too, as Montgomery told us about his life as a step-father, often interspersed with his trademark passion for wordplay and, of course, given his burgeoning career as a TV host, spelling

If I had one critique it would be that while Montgomery’s delivery made it seem like this was a loosely formatted show, it’s clear he’s perfectly rehearsed it, maybe even word for word. On opening night he seemed to forget a punchline, briefly letting down his guard as he worked out where he was meant to be in his set. It was still funny, making me briefly question whether this too was rehearsed. None of this changed how impressive or just plain funny the entire show was – though I did take severe issue with his ruthless take down of Peter Alexander pyjamas. But maybe that’s just me. / Stewart Sowman-Lund

Guy Montgomery (Photo: Supplied)

Takashi Wakasugi: Welcome to Japan

I’d love to travel to Japan but can’t afford it. So my next best option was heading to Takashi Wakasugi’s New Zealand International Comedy Festival show “Welcome to Japan”.

I enjoy international comics best when they relate their sets to our corner of the world. Waka (the nickname he insisted we call him) did this superbly by shitting on Australians, a fail-safe way to receive a raucous reception from New Zealanders. He also pointed out how much English doesn’t make sense, asking important grammatical and vocabulary questions, like why are toothbrushes – used to brush multiple teeth at a time – not called teethbrushes? 

The whole show felt like an engaging back-and-forth conversation between Waka and the crowd – and the venue added to that atmosphere. The Classic Comedy Club’s intimate upstairs “studio” was a perfect spot for Waka’s show, making it feel like a good lounge yarn with dear friends. Near the end of his set, Waka shared some hilarious, hand-crafted haikus. One of them was about how ridiculously slow Auckland’s City Rail Link build has been, which – as someone who often writes about transport – was my favourite joke of the night. I apologise to my fellow audience members for how loudly I hyena cackled over that haiku.Tommy de Silva

Liv Parker: Werewolves, Vampires and Harry Styles

For a few years, Chris Parker owned the 10pm slot at The Basement, turning out one-room plays like Camping and Docking which detonated the late night ambience with electric energy and a brand new voice, clear as a bell. A few years later and his younger sister Liv is doing it all over again – same time, same venue – with her debut hour, Werewolves, Vampires and Harry Styles. It’s a tour of her inner life as a ferocious teenage romantic, all understood through the lens of various tangled strands of pop culture. That’s a familiar approach, sure, but the way she goes about it is incredibly compelling.

It opens in her childhood bedroom, under a One Direction duvet, before leaping into a scene from Twilight, with Parker playing Bella and Edward with a wild intensity, eyes bulging and occasionally crossing, limbs twitching, hair flying. She knows these lines like her own skin. From there we switch between her explaining, in a trembling, highly-strung style, how various basic pop culture phenomena – Grease, Hayley Westenra’s Wuthering Heights – came into her life. She then campily recreates them, faithfully rendering the blinding intensity of teenage obsession and imagination. The show is marginally more impressive as a performance than a product, but undeniably announces her arrival as a singular talent of rare charisma, one who could easily match her more famous sibling in the public imagination, given the right opportunity. / Duncan Greive

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’
Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor
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